Govt to investigate irregularities in PEC

The government has launched a probe into alleged irregularities in Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) following complaints against the council management about different matters including the election process.

In this regard, a committee has been constituted with the mandate to evaluate the performance of PEC in relation to the preamble of the Pakistan Engineering Council Act 1975 as well as its functions specified in Section 8 of the Act.

It will assess the authenticity of complaints against PEC and the general dissatisfaction with the body. It will also examine the 1975 Act to determine whether there are any gaps or weaknesses that are affecting the institutional outcome.

The committee comprises the minister for law and justice, who is the convener, the minister for science and technology, minister for national food security and research, industries and production secretary, law and justice secretary, science and technology secretary as members and any other member co-opted by the committee. It will submit its report to the government within three weeks. PEC is a statutory regulatory body, working under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Science and Technology. It was established through an Act of Parliament in 1976 with the mandate to regulate the engineering profession and the engineering education.

It was informed in a recent cabinet meeting that the PEC governing body was the principal executive authority for supervising and governing the affairs and functions of the council. It is composed of 66 professional engineers with a minimum experience of 20 years.

The meeting was told that as per bylaws, the elections of the PEC governing body were conducted through an election committee. The elections were held on August 18, 2024 for the term 2024-27. However, after the vote, several complaints and allegations were made. Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal lodged a complaint that he could not vote because the biometric system had stopped working and many engineers also left without casting their ballot after waiting for a long time. He stated that unverified engineers were allowed to vote during that period.

Engineers were required to undergo the NADRA biometric verification system before casting their vote. The system faced an outage at 11 am on the polling day, lasting approximately three hours. On a letter written by the planning minister, the Ministry of Interior initiated an inquiry. Inquiry findings revealed that the issue occurred due to a sub-optimal connection pool configuration in the PEC application. Polling stoppage time was extended because of delay in tracing the root cause and votes were cast during the stoppage time.

Jawed Salim Qureshi, a candidate for the post of PEC chairman, filed a complaint alleging rigging and irregularities in the electoral process, deviation from the election standard operating procedures, verbal instructions favouring Engineer Wasim Nazir (the winning candidate) and unauthorised manual voting during the biometric system outage. He submitted a detailed application to the convener of the election committee, where he requested an impartial inquiry to ensure justice and election integrity. Thereafter, the complaints were forwarded to PEC.

PEC management, in its reply, stated that there was no mala fide intent by the election committee. After re-verifying and recounting votes using Form C from 155 polling stations, the complainant’s representatives asked for a recount of physical ballot, claiming that the use of Form C was insufficient. However, the committee did not agree and claimed that the allegations were vague and without a factual basis for the physical vote recount.

Another complaint was received regarding the PEC registrar, appointed in March 2021 and granted extension in March 2024. It was alleged that the registrar was promoted to Grade-22 against the existing post, which resulted in raising questions about adherence to the established procedures and rules. The term extension and promotion of the registrar were challenged in Lahore High Court. The court, in a writ petition dated July 3, 2024, directed the Ministry of Science and Technology to issue a speaking order after hearing the stakeholders and inform the court about the outcome.

After hearing the stakeholders and checking the record, the then science and technology secretary conveyed that the extension initially granted to the incumbent registrar by the PEC chairman, via notification dated March 19, 2024, was irregular.

Therefore, the registrar was directed to place the order before the governing body for an appropriate decision. However, the PEC did not comply.

A number of other complaints were also received by the elected members of the governing body for the term 2024-27, alleging the illegal formation of various committees by the chairman and registrar in violation of the Act and bylaws. In its reply, the PEC claimed that a detailed plan was approved in the management committee meetings. Feedback was gathered from the governing body members and work bodies/committees were formed based on preferences and expertise.