New Delhi: Thousands of Indian engineers in Kuwait, including IIT graduates, are staring at possible job losses as the Gulf country has decided to recognise degrees only if India's National Board of Accreditation had approved of the courses they studied.
The decision could affect most of the 10,000-odd Indian engineers who have been working in Kuwait for several decades.
The Public Authority for Manpower, a government body, had issued a circular in March this year asking the labour department not to give work permits to expatriate engineers unless they got no-objection certificates from the Kuwait Engineers Society.
In the case of India, engineers were to be issued no-objection certificates only if the course had been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
The NBA accredits engineering courses while the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) accredits universities and general colleges. Some universities also offer engineering courses.
Kuwait's decision could invalidate the BTech degrees awarded by the Indian Institutes of Technology, IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, Jadavpur University (JU) and Calcutta University, which offered three-year BTech courses for BSc graduates till recently.
The IITs, IISc and JU have never taken accreditation from the NBA for their engineering courses. Many of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are yet to take accreditation for their BTech courses. BITS Pilani and JU have accreditation from the NAAC.
The Progressive Professional Forum in Kuwait that represents Indian engineers and other professionals has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention. "The NBA came into existence only in 2010. All institutions, many of them over 50 years old, have been awarding engineering degrees and cannot be expected to have obtained NBA accreditation," PPF president G. Santhosh Kumar told The Telegraph from Kuwait City.
The NBA, earlier a wing of technical education regulator AICTE, has been in existence since the 1990s but became an autonomous body in 2010. It has so far given accreditation to courses offered by 600 institutions among the 3,500 that teach technical courses.
The HRD ministry has taken up the matter with its counterpart in Kuwait. In a recent letter, higher education secretary R. Subrahmanyam said the NBA could not be expected to have given retrospective accreditation. Sources said the government also argued that institutions like the IITs and IISc Bangalore were recognised globally, while calling for the new condition to be withdrawn.
NBA chairman Prof. Surendra Prasad declined comment. "Please talk to me later on this issue," he said.
Former NIT Rourkela director Prof. Sunil Sarangi said the NBA was started as part of a quality-control measure. "The NBA is a member of the Washington Accord that facilitates recognition of degrees and mobility of engineers among member countries. All institutions in India should get their courses accredited by the NBA."
A delegation from Kuwait is expected to visit India soon in connection with the issue.
