I know people who are earning millions of rupees and still planning to open their own workshops
DOSALI: Being an engineering graduate in Pakistan, it is difficult to develop a career strategy, especially in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Fata. I have seen numerous cases of brilliant cumulative GPA holders earning pennies or being unemployed after agonisingly painful studies of four years or more.
The problems are trifold. First, internships might be offered but with hollow job premises. Companies use hundreds of interns to get work done cheaply. Most companies in Lahore and Rawalpindi have a very small ratio of engineers and teach diploma holders the same work for half the pay. Second, the pay scale is unbelievably low. The pay bracket in Islamabad and Rawalpindi for a fresh graduate is at hand-to-mouth levels, going up to only about Rs15,000 a month with little value assigned to one’s engineering skills. Third, what companies are really looking for are technicians, not engineers.
If you do land a respectable engineering job, you’ll want to blow your brains out because the majority of them are about repeatedly fixing one big machine. I know people who are earning millions of rupees and still planning to open their own workshops. Why study so much when, at the end of the day, you just have to fix something using a manual?
The government should encourage multinational companies to open up shop here in Pakistan so that the brilliant minds of engineers are put to good use. I may not be a good engineer but there isn’t much in the job market for me that motivates me to get better either.
Khalid Hamid
Published in The Express Tribune, December 1st, 2016.
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