During the day of the engineer celebrated in Zaghouan, the dean of the Order, Mohsen Gharssi, denounced the deterioration of the material and social conditions of the engineers, revealing that an engineer in three has already left Tunisia. This observation is part of an alarming trend already observed for several years.
The leakage of skills worsens in the engineering sector. The dean of the Order of Engineers in Tunisia, Mohsen Gharssi, sounded the alarm on the scale of the phenomenon: more than 45,000 Tunisian engineers out of a total of 110,000 registered left the country.
According to him, this hemorrhage results from professional precariousness, wage stagnation and non-compliance with the commitments made by the authorities towards the profession.
Supervising, Tuesday in Zaghouan, the celebration of the engineer’s day alongside Governor Karim Barnaji, Gharssi recalled that the agreement concluded in February 2021 between the government and the order – relating to the extension of the specific premium for public sector engineers – has still not been applied.
An ancient phenomenon which increases
The observation drawn up by Mohsen Gharssi confirms a worrying trend already reported earlier in the year. In March 2025, former dean Kamel Sahnoun declared before the parliamentary committee for education and scientific research that Out of 90,000 registered engineers, 39,000 had already left the country.
The pace was then estimated at nearly 20 departures per day, a dizzying figure which already translated the seriousness of the situation.
At the time, the cost of training engineers in Tunisia was estimated at 650 million dinars per year, a colossal investment often lost in favor of other countries. In October 2025, the number of departures now exceeded 45,000, confirming that the crisis did not weaken.
The structural causes persist
The reasons mentioned remain the same: low wages, lack of perspectives, projects blocked by bureaucracy and absence of an environment conducive to innovation. Many engineers, especially in the public and industrial sectors, denounce the marginalization of their role and the absence of policies of encouraging research and technological entrepreneurship.
Mohsen Gharssi recalled that the Tunisian engineer remains a pillar of development, but that without institutional recognition or improvement of his living conditions, the flight of talents will continue to deprive the country of his best skills.
Placed under the theme “The engineer, the lever of sustainable development and the circular economy”, the engineer’s day stressed the importance of this profession in the country’s ecological and industrial transition.
An expensive and alarming brain leakage
According to estimates, nearly one in two engineers trained in Tunisia now exercises abroad. The phenomenon, already described as skills drain by several professional organizations, directly threatens the country’s competitiveness in the fields of energy, digital and industry.
Specialists believe that each departure represents not only a loss of skills, but also a shortfall for the national economy, weakened by the growing imbalance between training and retention of talents.
