One in every 65 Jordanians is an engineer — association

AMMAN — The ratio of engineers to the population in Jordan is among the highest globally, Jordan Engineers Association (JEA) President Abdullah Obeidat said in a statement released Sunday. 

Noting that there are currently 119,000 engineers in the Kingdom, which makes one in every 65 Jordanians an engineer, Obeidat added that the international standard is one out of 200 people. 

When calculating the number of engineers to the number of adults, one in every 35 is an engineer, he said in the statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times. 

Obeidat, who was speaking at the inauguration of a forum for women civil engineers, said women constitute around 25 per cent of the overall number of engineers in the Kingdom, while their representation used to be only 10 per cent some 10 years ago.

There are nearly 30,000 women engineers in the country, according to the statement.  

The rise in the number of engineering graduates has resulted in unemployment among engineers, and the JEA has worked to provide new graduates with training and employment opportunities, Obeidat added. 

Fresh graduates possess only 15 per cent of the required qualifications to enter the labour market, but the association works to hone their technical and professional skills to enable them to join the workforce, the JEA president noted. 

Obeidat said the association offered training to over 2,100 engineers in 2014, compared to 1,600 the previous year. 

According to Khaled Abu Rumman, head of the civil engineering department at JEA, the number of civil engineers in the Kingdom is around 33,000, with women constituting around 23 per cent.