A group of 50 young engineers who graduated from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) today submitted a memorandum to the Malaysian Board of Engineers (BEM) complaining that they were being discriminated as a result of a change in an education policy six year ago.

Spokesperson for the group, Sim Tze Tzin told malaysiakini that they were now affected by a government policy that reduced their courses from four to three years or from five to four years in 1996.

"The ministry stated then that the reduction of the courses was necessary to enable more engineering graduates to fill the vast vacancies then," said Sim. He said that about 12,000 graduates were involved in this policy shift.

He added that the new policy now resulted in BEM reformulating its registration of engineers to place this group under restricted registration with the condition of having to have six years of work experience to qualify as a professional engineer (PE).

Previously, fresh graduates needed only four years of work experience to qualify as a PE. All engineers must be registered with BEM so that they may sit for a compulsory examination to qualify as a PE, said Sim.

The group also complained about the long period BEM took to register them.

"BEM's registering process has taken about 16 months when it should be done in one or two months. We had to wait seven and a half years to become a PE when the previous graduates only took four years," said Sim.

The group is now asking BEM to reconsider their registration on the basis that their course and their work experience were not different from those of past graduates.

They also want the Education Minister Musa Muhammad to intervene in this matter as it arose from the change in the government's education policy.

No option

The group also said that engineering students from Universiti Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia and all other institutions of higher learning were affected by the change in the education policy.

"All these graduates have been victimised as a result of a rash decision of the Education Ministry. The ministry has failed to consider the future of the students. The students are now paying for the mistake," said the group in their memorandum.

Sim also said that the group had to resort to submitting the memorandum as all other possible discussions have failed.

"We have sent a letter to BEM on March 16, but there was no response from them. We tried to arrange for a dialogue session with BEM and UTM but it did not take off," he said.