By Hifsa Raja ISLAMABAD, May 23 (INP-WealthPK): The Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and Hattar Industries have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to increase the capacity of engineering graduates and their employment prospects and to promote industry-academia linkages by facilitating their on-job training and hands-on experience. The PEC is assisting the federal government as a think-tank, establishing standards for engineering products and services besides safeguarding the interest of its members. As part of the MoU implementation, the PEC has launched an online portal for on-job training of engineers. Engineers can apply online for internship placement. They can apply on Trainee Engineers Portal through submission of data including discipline, domicile, location and area of interest along with CV. After the apply, the data is segregated in the form of discipline, domicile, location and area of interest by the PEC for employers. Then access is allowed to interested employers to the applicants’ pool for selection through profile/CV review and subsequent interview (if needed) as per their need/requirement (industry, technical organization, higher education institutions, R&D, services, marketing). In this regard, the PEC governing body has allocated dedicated funds of Rs100 million and a steering committee has been constituted to look after all the process/activities of such initiatives. The salient features of the MoU include industrial tours for engineering students, funding for final year design projects (FYDPs) by the PEC based on solution for societal/industrial problems, and paid internships for engineers. Talking to WealthPK, Dr Bilal Ali, Assistant Professor from School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), said the Hattar Industries Association (HIA) identifies relevant topics for students' FYDPs, according to the needs of local Hattar Economic Zone (HEZ) industries. “These are mostly the indigenous solutions to industrial challenges and issues. These subjects will be distributed across the higher education institutions for faculty and students to adopt for research and design purposes,” he said. Dr Bilal said the FYDPs on the themes will also be funded by the PEC. “A specialized project management unit will be established for the selection and supervision of FYDPs. In this regard, the PEC and the HIA will also nominate focal persons,” he said. The PEC and HIA will also select viable cottage industries for the HEZ in order to support cottage industry development through necessary facilitation by the government, in collaboration with the chamber of commerce and industries.