General News of Sunday, 19 June 2016
Source: GNA
Engineering Council
The Engineering Council has announced plans to take robust steps to standardize the education, training and practice of engineering in the country to eliminate quacks.
The move is also to avert disasters triggered by poor professional work and also promote and encourage adoption of professional standards by engineering practitioners and forestall flaws that often aid disasters such as flooding and building failures.
Mr. Augustine Kuuire, Board Chairman of the Engineering Council said this when he led a five-member delegation to call on the out-going GNA General Manager, Bernard Otabil, to discuss public education partnership deal with the country’s news wire service. He said engineering practitioners, spare parts dealers, firms, licensed bodies and educational units that provide engineering courses would be required to obtain licenses and register under the council.
The Council would keep a register and provide for the discipline of registered engineering practitioners and companies as required by law, The Council seeks to partner the Agency as the umbrella of the media in the country, to help raise public awareness about its functions, existence, and activities.
Mr. Kuuire said regulating engineering practice would bring sanity in the profession.
“We are going to license all engineering professionals or practitioners right from the engineer down to the craftsman so that each and every practitioner is held responsible at his level of practice.” “If there is any mishap we can trace it to who committed the error and in that case we will be able to regulate the practice of the engineering in this country.”
Practicing craftsmen without certificates would be required by law to work under a certified craftsman, he said. “We want to educate the public not to engage people who are not registered with the council, it means they are quack.” Mr. Kuuire said the council would work closely with the existing institutions like the Ghana Institution of Engineers and the Institutions of Engineering which will serve as the licensing bodies.
“With the engineering council, you have to pass through the licensing body to be licensed and we [the Council] will now register you.”