Around 66 percent of students failed engineering licensing examinations conducted by the Nepal Engineering Council.

Padma Bahadur Shahi, chair of the council, said out of 2,474 examinees who appeared in the examinations that were held for the second time, only 801 passed. A total of 2,568 university graduates applied for the exam; out of them, 94 didn’t appear in the tests held on June 21-23. The council is the national regulatory body of engineers.

This is not the first time such a large number of engineers failed to secure the minimum pass marks and get to practise engineering in the country.

In the first licensing exams held on March 26 and 27, only 28 percent succeeded. Only 565 candidates had passed the professional licensing examination, out of the 1,981 who appeared for the test.

An engineer must secure at least 50 percent marks in the licensing exam.

The council conducted the examination in 23 different categories.

According to chair Shahi, the majority of examinees were from civil engineering. He said most of those failing had studied abroad.

“The questions are asked from the course from the first to the fourth year in Nepal,” said Shahi. “That might be the reason for the failure in the case of the students who studied abroad for not succeeding.”

India, China, South Korea, Japan, Russia and Bangladesh among others are major destination countries for Nepali students pursuing an engineering degree.

The licensing was made compulsory by amending Nepal Engineering Council Act last year after questions were raised over the professional competence of engineers.

Prior to that, the council would provide an engineer registration certificate to graduates after submitting certificates to the council.

 According to chair Shahi, 77,000 engineers are registered with the council so far in the country.