PESHAWAR: Jobless engineers held a protest demonstration on Thursday against increasing unemployment in the country and urged the government to recruit qualified engineers on the vacant posts on merit and accommodate them in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project.

The engineers in a joint statement urged the government to speed up the process of internship scheme approved by the prime minister. They also urged the Pakistan Engineering Council to facilitate professional engineers rather than the contractors mafia who were exploiting qualified engineers.

The government, they said, should make it mandatory for the Pakistan Engineering Council to create a liasion with the industries to generate employment opportunities for engineers in order to overcome the growing joblessness.

They also urged the government to announce vacancies and replace the non-professional people with qualified engineers. They demanded 70 per cent quota in the CPEC for Pakistan Engineering Council under a memorandum of understanding to control the increasing unemployment in the country.

The engineers also demanded of the government to set up training academies wherein they could develop their skills to serve the country with more zeal and in a befitting manner. The unemployed engineers also demanded monthly allowance so that they could get a sense of security to avoid leaving the country in search of jobs.

They said that the government should stop their exploitation at the hands of private firms where long-hour duty was assigned to them on meagre wages.

The engineers also gave suggestions for change in the present curricula, service structure for engineers and induction in various industries as paid trainee engineers for one-year period on the pattern of house job doctors.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2018