In a previous newsletter, we discussed the distressing circumstances of Pooja Shah and her family after she was rejected and banned twice by Engineers Australia. Today is the second part of her story after a response was obtained from EA in the formal review application of her second ban.
When a refused applicant comes to our office for help in a possible review to EA, it is difficult to advise them about what basis a review could be successful for EA does not release any information why the initial application is not acceptable. The vague language in the negative EA result letters has always been devastating for those who receive them. They offer no hope or insight into how they could possibly be successful in the future. Considering applicants pay well over $1000 for the express service, such a brief response is rather insulting.
For the first time, some light has been shone on the internal thought process of the skill assessment department at EA. Since Pooja’s second one year ban was in place when she first saw me, there was little choice but to lodge an EA formal review and pay hundreds of dollars for this to occur.
We felt truly sorry for Pooja’s plight. She is unable to move forward without her skill assessment but we had no knowledge what EA seemed so upset about to threaten to report her to the DoHA. We felt outraged the way Pooja had been treated and on behalf of all fair-minded Australian citizens, we lodged a lengthy complaint outlining our opinion why EA had breached Australian Consumer Laws (ACL) and how Pooja herself felt discriminated against, being a woman.
Finally, a response came from EA on the 19th March from the National Manager of Skill Assessment for Engineers Australia. They flatly rejected the content of our complaint. However, they stated;
“Further it is Engineers Australia general practice to refrain from providing details of the offending material to applicants as doing so can have the effect of enabling third parties who engage in the fraudulent and unethical competency demonstration report writing industry to correct their mistakes and refine their product. In this instance however given that Miss Shah feels so strongly that she has not had sufficient opportunity to present her case we have exercised our discretion to depart from our use your practice and set out below in detail for her consideration some examples of the issues we have found with her submitted work.”
What a great policy. Let’s not tell anyone why they got refused because we think all people who are rejected are associated with others who are fraudulent and unethical types conspiring to make false CDR reports. It seems everyone has to suffer because Engineers Australia is involved in a war with some third parties which have nothing to do with Pooja. How many innocent people need to suffer while EA remains paranoid about an industry which may have nothing to do with the applicants?
It also brings up another serious concern. If you don’t tell people why they are rejected, it draws people into wasting money on a review process that perhaps has no chance of success. Of course not that EA will complain about the money that brings to their bank account.
Engineers Australia’s own paranoid private war with the CDR Report writing industry has negatively affected Pooja’s life beyond measure. In our next edition, we will examine why EA rejected Pooja’s application for a second time and resulted in a ban for the second time. It will shock everyone who has ever written a CDR and applied for a skill assessment as an Engineer.
