Pune: The Armed Forces, particularly the Army, has got only 40 per cent of required infrastructure including accommodation, and it is a challenge for the military engineering services to cope with the deficiency, said Lt Gen Michael Mathews, commandant of city-based College of Military Engineering (CME).
He was speaking to mediapersons ahead of the planned 237th Corps Day celebration of the Corps of Engineers of the Army on November 18.
Lt Gen Mathews further said, “Our main job is to support the combat, which is supporting the other arms in the combat area. And, the key challenge in this regard is upgrading our equipment profile. We have to keep upgrading to match with the latest technologies in the world. The Military Engineering Services (MES) is the main agency as far as infrastructure is concerned for all the three services - Army, Navy and Air Force. They have to cope with deficiency in infrastructure for all the three services.”
Talking about the border roads, he added, “Weather poses a challenge as the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) gets less time to construct roads in border areas. Hence, technology is the solution and we are looking for technology enhancement.”
The CME is a premier technological and military training institution of the Corps of Engineers. Alma Mater of all Engineer officers, CME has a role encompassing training, advisory, projects and research and experimentation for the four pillars, viz combat engineering, military engineering services (MES), Boarder Roads Organisation (BRO) and Survey. In addition to training the personnel from Corps of Engineers, CME also trains persons of the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, Para Military Forces and friendly foreign countries in selected areas, to enable them to perform certain
specialised tasks.
CME conducts around 130 courses for officers and junior commissioned officers and other ranks, and trains over 3,700 individuals along with over 175 from friendly foreign countries.
The MTech and BTech courses in Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering disciplines are the premier courses conducted here, for which the college is affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.
