TUGUEGARAO CITY (PIA) March 11 — Two senior professors of the Cagayan State University (CSU), Carig Campus, were promoted international engineers after having been accepted new members of the elite Asian Federation of Engineering Organization (AFEO).

Engr. Arthur G. Ibañez, the campus executive officer of CSU Carig, and Engr. Nestor Rivera, department chair of the electrical engineering program at the College of Engineering, went to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, this year’s venue of the international conference of AFEO, to formalize their membership to the organization recently.

There, Ibañez and Rivera, together with other 49 new members, 35 of whom are Filipinos, were formally installed by the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Both received from Prime Minister Hun an AFEO medal on which their membership codes were inscribed, marking their legitimate affiliation with the organization whose main advocacies include trade, education, construction and consultancy.
Rivera is the only electrical engineer in the country qualified this year to be an AFEO member, while Ibañez is one of two civil engineers who met the standards of AFEO.

Both of them, according to Rivera, went through a screening process managed and supervised by the Professional Technological Council, an international accrediting agency based in the Philippines.

“As international engineers, we can now practice our professions in AFEO member – countries at the invitation of the organization and without having to apply for working visas,” Rivera said.

“Once we are called to practice outside the Philippines, we are guaranteed to work tax free,” he added.

According to Ibañez, as soon as bilateral talks with AFEO are ironed out in 2015, they will commence with their role as international engineers.

The two well-acclaimed engineers are active members and officers of local and national engineering organizations such as the Philippine Institute if Civil Engineers and Institute of Integrated Electrical Engineers of the Philippines.