FAISALABAD   -   Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) Chairman Engr. Muhammad Najeeb Haroon said on Wednesday that engineers must be included in the decision-making process at the highest level for establishment of the import substitution industry and promotion of ‘Made in Pakistan’ products.

Addressing the business and industrial community during a meeting in Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI), he stressed the need to enhance quality and employability of the registered engineers and said that in this connection the PEC had launched a six-month internship course for the young engineers. He urged the industrialists to avail from this project as PEC would pay the stipend while their placement in industries would help engineers to understand the engineering related intricacies and present their workable and cost effective solutions. He said that PEC was also funding innovative projects. “Last year, it had undertaken 250 research projects while this year it was funding 600 tasks,” he said and added that next year approximately 1,000 projects would be launched in collaboration with universities to promote research culture.

He requested the industrialists to encourage engineers working in their respective establishments to get renew their membership of PEC. Continuing, Engr. Najeeb Haroon said that 48 years ago when he passed the engineering exam, Pakistan was included in the developing country and still we are in the same stage. He held his generation responsible for this debacle as we failed to deliver and put the country on the road to progress and prosperity. He said that there are 255,000 engineers and we could usher an industrial revolution by exploiting their professionals’ skills.

He also mentioned unprecedented technological and scientific growth during the last two decades and said that we should also avail from these developments. He stressed the need for forging close relationships between engineers and industrialists and said that young engineers should prefer to become entrepreneurs by themselves instead of running after the jobs. He said that being a signatory of the “Washington Accord”, Pakistani engineering degree is recognized all over the world. He said that PEC is a regulatory body but it has also presented eight study reports on different sectors including energy to the federal government. He said that PEC has also launched a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification course in addition to introducing arbitration and mediation courses duly recognized by UK.

Chairman PEC said that there are different cadres of services like police, civil and postal etc but there were no separate engineering service in our civil structure. He said that the senate has approved the engineering services of Pakistan but still there are many hitches to recognize engineering as a separate service. Senior Vice President FCCI Dr Sajjad Arshad welcomed the guests and said that FCCI has 10,000 members representing more than 100 trades, sectors and subsectors. “There are three office bearers with 28 executive members. Similarly, over 100 standing committees are representing different sectors”, he said and added that these are responsible to identify their sector specific issues along with their viable solutions.

He said that office bearers make serious efforts for the resolution of these issues at local, provincial and federal level.

He said that textile is the iconic representation of Faisalabad. “This city alone was contributing more than 60% share towards total textile exports just a few years ago in addition to providing 40% jobs to the unemployed youth”, he said and added that now the agriculture sector was also making steady progress but the exports have declined.

He said that our industrial sector was using old, deprecated and obsolete technology and machinery and it should be reorganized on modern scientific lines by switching over to the latest technologies and machineries.

Engr. Meer Masood Rasheed said that PEC was launching a number of new and innovative projects in collaboration with different universities across the country. “They have come to Faisalabad to deliver cheques to the local universities undertaking various projects”, he added.

Engr. Ahmad Hasan, Engr. Asim Munir, Engr. Babar Shahzad, Engr. Saqib Shahzad, Mian Muhammad Tayyab, Dr Arif and Rana Ikramullah also addressed the meeting.

Later, Vice President FCCI Hajji Muhammad Aslam Bhalli offered vote of thanks while Dr Sajjad Arshad and Engr. Najeeb Haroon exchanged shields of their respective organisations to each other.