PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Monday directed the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners (PCATP) to respond to a petition challenging a by-law meant for the issuance of licences to architects.
Around a dozen architects, who filed the petition, sought the court’s orders for the PCATP against using the by-law with retrospective effect to hold competency examination of architects for licence issuance.
After holding preliminary hearing, a bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Syed Arshad Ali issued notice to the PCATP for response to the petition filed by Sohail Ahmad and 11 others.
The petitioners requested the court to declare that PCATP by-law 78 (1-A) be applied to the students, who had obtained admission after its promulgation in 2018.
They also sought orders for the council to issue licences to all degree-holders who were enrolled for the course prior to 2018 with the legitimate expectancy that on completion of their programme, they would be issued licence for practice.
PHC asks council of architects, town planners to respond to petition
Lawyer for the petitioners Babar Khan Yousafzai said his clients were graduates of Bachelor of Architecture from University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, and CECOS University, Peshawar and that they took up the five-year course from 2014-19.
He said the petitioners, on completion of the course, applied to PCATP for licences but the council registered them as architects while rejecting their request for issuance of licence.
The lawyer said the council had relied on the 2018 amendment to the PCATP by-laws, which provided clearance of the Architect’s Competency Examination (ACE) as eligibility criteria for issuance of licence.
He added that his clients were aggrieved of the new PCATP by-law 78 (1-A), which provided that a person possessing architectural qualification from PCATP accredited institution should be eligible to take the licensing examination after one year of practical experience.
The counsel said primarily, the council issued eligibility criteria for exam in which the graduate students were required to work with PCATP registered firm for a period of one year, while overlooking the fact that there were less than 160 registered architectural firms in the country.
He said on receiving complaints, the council amended its eligibility criteria to ‘work as an assistant architect under direct supervision of PCATP registered architect having minimum of five years of experience’.
Mr Yousafzai said the change in eligibility criteria for licence by the council had led to the unemployment of degree-holders from 2018, 2019 and 2020 sessions and even affected those from the 2016-17 session.
He said even after the amendments made in the by-laws so far no exam had been conducted for the grant of licence by the council.
The lawyer said though the by-laws applied to both architects and town planners but the eligibility criteria for grant of licence had only been made applicable to architects while excluding the town planners in an arbitrary manner.
He added that the quorum of the annual general meeting, which had given approval for the amendments in Apr 2018, was also not complete so that the said amendment was not maintainable.
Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2021