THE Pakistan Engineering Council has been dysfunctional for the last about four months. Engineers have been facing difficulty in getting registration or renewal of registration which is mandatory for any public-sector job related to engineering.

I applied for my registration renewal via the PEC online portal in August, and it’s been more than two months and I have been waiting for my renewed PEC card/certificate.

I called on contact numbers given at their website but all in vain as no one was there to receive the call. I’ve called almost every day for a month or so but every time I failed to get a response. All their contact numbers remain unanswered.

I visited the PEC regional office, Karachi, but they simply said they were not able to help me as the renewal request is made at the Islamabad PEC headquarters.

My concern is why has the PEC enlisted so many numbers on its website (for PEC Islamabad office) if no one is available to answer a call? And, yes, you’ll be charged for that call which no one is picking up and instead a computer voice message appears at the end, saying: “Sorry, no one is available to answer your call”.

Why Is the PEC taking so much time in awarding a renewal card?

Higher authorities should take notice of the situation to safeguard the rights of engineers so that no one remains at risk of staying out of a public-sector engineering-related job due to the PEC.

Muhammad Shehzad
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2018