THE Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) issues more than 10,000 supervisory certificates each year to fresh engineers. The goal is to provide fresh engineers an opportunity to work on a site so that they may gain practical experience in their field. For this purpose, the PEC makes it mandatory for all private contractors and firms to hire a certain number of fresh engineers each year depending on the nature of their licence.

The PEC should be appreciated for the initiative, but it should be vigilant too. As soon as an engineer is issued a supervisory certificate, his/her inbox is flooded with messages from ‘agents’, offering the engineer a one-time sum of money in exchange of the supervisory certificate. Unfortunately, due to their economic condition, a majority of engineers sell their certificates and the private contractors/firms use them to renew their own commercial licence with the PEC.

Resultantly, many engineers remain unemployed throughout the year even though they are ‘employed’ on paper.

The problem has many layers and requires serious attention. The PEC should devise a mechanism through which engineers having certificates may directly ask the firms to hire them.

These ‘agents’ who make huge amounts of money through unlawful buying and selling of certificates should also be dealt with according to the rules and regulations by the relevant authority.

Muhammad Farooq Rasheed

Lahore

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2021