AMMAN -- Abdullah Obeidat was reelected on Friday to serve a second three-year term as president of the Jordan Engineers Association (JEA).
The poll's results were announced online on Saturday at 1:00am, according to Khaled Qadoumi, president of the JEA elections management committee.
In the elections, JEA members chose the president, vice president and nine council members who will represent the association's seven divisions, Qadoumi added.
Four candidates competed for the presidency and vice presidency of the association, with Majid Tabaa elected as vice president.
For the first time, two members of the association's electrical division will join the council, he indicated.
"The electrical division has two members because the number of members who paid their dues reached 20,000," Qadoumi told The Jordan Times over the phone.
The elections began at 9:00am on Friday and concluded at 7:00pm. Engineers could vote at any of the JEA's branches.
The election results were broadcast online and on screens set up at the JEA so that engineers could follow them.
Qadoumi noted that 51,000 of the 97,000 members were eligible to vote because they had paid their dues, adding that of those, 25,000 engineers were outside Jordan and 8,000 were in the West Bank.
"The number of voters reached 8,114. This is higher than in the last elections, in which 4,500 engineers participated," he said.
Nabeel, an electrical engineer, said that although he showed up to vote, he did not think the elections would make a difference.
"I do not believe in these elections because the association has not done anything for engineers. All the candidates' slogans are only empty promises," he told The Jordan Times after voting on Friday.
He asserted that engineers are one of the most important segments of society, but have not received the proper care.
"We pay monthly dues for a club at the JEA, but they have not organised any social or entertainment activities for JEA members," Nabeel claimed.
He also complained that the pensions the JEA offers were too low.
"Some engineers were paid only JD400 after they retired," he claimed.
Ashraf Tomizeh, a civil engineer, said that engineering graduates from the Kingdom's universities were having a hard time finding jobs.
"Sometimes an engineer spends a lot of time searching for work and then finds a job at a low salary. I hope that the association will work with concerned parties to help engineers in the future," he said.
Anis Halwani, another civil engineer, countered that the JEA does help its members, but cannot solve the problem of joblessness on its own.
"Unemployment is a national issue. There is unemployment in every sector. It is not the association's job to resolve this problem, it is the Ministry of Labour's duty to do so," he told The Jordan Times after casting his ballot.
Mamoun Mohammad, a chemical engineer, voiced hope that association would modify the age of retirement.
"There is no early retirement policy and I hope they apply it," he said.
© Jordan Times 2012
