Govt comes to aid of Indian engineers in Kuwait after new qualification norms

India has written to the Kuwaiti government after it set new academic qualification norms that left in the lurch thousands of Indian engineers working in the west Asian kingdom, including graduates from the IIT and the NIT campuses.

In a letter to the Kuwaiti education minister on April 13, the Union HRD ministry said qualification of most engineers is valid, though they got their degrees from institutes that may not feature on the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) list.

“Since NBA has started functioning only from 2012, it is possible that some engineers are currently working in Kuwait who acquired degrees prior to setting up of NBA. It is requested that the qualification of such engineers may not be questioned at this later stage,” the letter states.

The government’s request follows fears for more than 15,000 Indian engineers working in Kuwait after the kingdom changed rules for renewing resident permit for foreign workers.

According to the new rules, Indian engineers working in Kuwait need to get an NOC from the Kuwait Society of Engineers (KSE) to extend their stay. The KSE is likely to grant the NOC only after verifying the accreditation of the colleges from where they graduated.

The government clarified that Parliament has created a few premier institutions of excellence in engineering which are producing high-quality engineers after admitting students through a very competitive examination.

“These institutes have their own system of accreditation through External Peer Group reviews. Government of India considers that the students graduating from these institutions have qualified duly accredited courses,” R Subrahmanyam, higher education secretary in the HRD ministry, said in the letter.