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"id": 19205,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/19205/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Eng. Gumbo",
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"id": 24,
"legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
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"content": "Sorry, I was told it is the preamble or the long title. If you look at that preamble, you will appreciate that the role that is envisaged here is actually that of a stern gatekeeper and that, to me, is really not what we are looking for. We should now move, so that in addition to gate-keeping, we place bigger emphasis on the development of the practice of engineering. Why do I say so? You will excuse me in this case, because I may be speaking selfishly. It has been said in some quarters, and I agree, that if you want to gauge the development of a country, one of the quickest indices is the ratio of that country’s population to the number of engineers. For instance, China has six million engineers against a population of 1.3 billion people. So, they have a ratio of one engineer to 300 people. In the case of Kenya, by “engineers”, I mean those engineering professionals who are registered in accordance with Cap.530 of the Laws of Kenya are now only less than 2,000 in a population of 40 million people. So, you are looking at a ratio of 20,000 Kenyans for every one engineer. I do not have to tell you which one between Kenya and China is more developed. Looking at it that way, we need now to place more emphasis on the development of the practice. The reasons are obvious. Those of you who have been keen and have been looking at the Press, there is almost a rebellion at the Faculties of engineering at Egerton, JKUAT and Masinde Muliro universities because the way the faculty understands engineering in contemporary terms is not the way the Board, as it exists now, understands engineering. For example, you will see that those who have done geology and are actually qualified engineers have been denied registration. According to the Board, they do not qualify to be engineers. Those who have done computer engineering have been denied registration because according to the Board, those people do not qualify to be engineers. In fact, if you read today’s newspaper, former engineering students of JKUAT and Egerton University who have been denied registration on the grounds that the Board does not recognize the courses that they took, have actually gone to court. This is not what we want. I think we want the Board to place more emphasis on the promotion and development of engineers. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the instances are many. I am also a member of what used to be called the Institution of Electrical Engineers of Great Britain. Now, it is called the Institution of Engineering and Technology. In that institution, even if you applied today with your Form Four certificate, they will not tell you that you do not qualify. What they will tell you is that we have looked at your academic qualifications. For you to be able to go to the first step of being registered, you need to do the following. In our country it is not like that. If you make an application, you will straightaway be told, for instance, right now, that in order to become a registered engineer, you have to be a graduate. You will straightaway be told you are not a graduate and, therefore, we cannot register you. I think we need to place more emphasis on developing programmes that ensure that we facilitate the registration of engineers. To be honest as has been said by some of the contributors who spoke before me, the fact that we have so many foreign engineers in the country is a testimony to the fact that they are not enough. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, two years ago, I wanted my daughter to be like me; to do engineering. I thought she could because the basic requirement in engineering is Mathematics and she was good at that. But I took her for a walk to what we used to call the American Wing; that is, the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Nairobi. When she saw the equipment and the apparatus in those laboratories, she said that this is not the place she wanted to be. It is a big problem because you still find students being instructed using the same apparatus which were supplied by the American Government in the early 1960s. Honestly, the world has moved on. We need to ensure the engineering programmes being taught at the universities are up to date. I think the Board needs to have a role here. I have given you the examples of the uproar that is at Masinde Muliro University, Egerton University, Kenyatta University and even Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, which is one of the universities with the most modern equipment for teaching engineering. In addition to the duties that have been envisaged in this Bill, I think the Board really must ensure close working relations. It is a problem. I know of many people in this country who left the university more than 20 years ago, but they have not been registered. As a matter of fact, I want to confess here that for me to get my registration which was early by the standards of the Board, I literally sneaked in by presenting an academic project which the Board members did not quite understand. We do not want it to be that way. Why should someone who has a university degree be out there for 20 years and still not qualify to be called a professional engineer? So, I think the Board really must reinvent itself. I have looked at what the Bill proposes. One of the major amendments that we need to propose is that even the Board must strive to be contemporary. We have had many cases where you go to site calling yourself the consulting engineer and some of these young boys and girls who are very good in Information Technology (IT)--- As times goes by, the borderline between IT and engineering is actually very thin. Sometimes it disappears totally. Even the borderline between science and engineering disappears totally. Sometimes it disappoints you when you find that somebody who has presented themselves as the expert is actually a person who needs to be taught what is contemporary. So, I think there must be a way for the Board to always be up to date. The comments you get from the young graduates who go to the Board to be registered is that the Board is not up to date. The Board is still stuck in many years gone by. For instance, it is not spoken, but according to the Engineers Registration Board, engineering in Kenya is defined as electrical engineering, electronics engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and structural engineering. Anybody knows that even some of the most sophisticated types of engineering, for instance, aeronautical engineering, very few manage to get registered because in the Board’s mind, their definition of engineering is still very closed. I will be proposing amendments here so that it includes even our understanding of engineering. What is engineering? Engineering as has been defined here is what it is. But most importantly, engineering is concerned with the results. How can you then not accept that somebody who is applying science appropriately to give you results still cannot be called an engineer because maybe unlike the Member for Rarieda, he does not have a certificate saying that he is an engineer in electrical engineering? We need to define the bounds of engineering to capture the realities that are contemporary with us now. I have talked about the need to facilitate the quick registration. It takes back the country when you have to practice for 20 years before you can get recognition as an engineer. I do not wish to go to what most of my colleagues have said, but I think this issue of ensuring that programmes are up to date is very important. One of the reasons why the Board cannot be able to effectively police the engineering programmes at universities is that the resources they have now are very limiting. I think this Bill will not be adequately progressive if it does not address the issues of making sure that the Board is empowered to ensure continuous professional development of engineers. That is why under the financial provisions, I will be proposing that we introduce a fund, sort of a levy from those who are practicing engineering in this country, so that we can have a small percentage of the fees that is paid out being channeled into a fund that can be used for continuous professional development of engineers. I think it is also important because as you know, a lot of these things that we are using, and even most of the IT skills that we acquire at the core of it, is actually engineering. We need to make sure that we are contemporary. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the penalties that have been proposed here, in my view, are not enough. Those of us who have been and still are practitioners of engineering suffer a lot in the hands of quacks. In the law, even as it existed before, one of the terms that is completely abused is the title “engineer”. Even in the village, small plumbers who fix toilets walk around with bulbs calling themselves engineers. We suffer because electricians who do no more than changing bulbs walk around in the villages and when they walk in, because there is a shortage, people look at them with their goatskin bags and say that the engineer has arrived. There are masqueraders as the Minister will tell you. Even in the Ministry, there are masqueraders who carry big titles when they are not, in fact, engineers. The law needs to be stiff to discourage the misuse of the practice of engineering because our country needs professional engineers to progress accordingly. Hon. Mungatana has mentioned briefly the issue of ensuring that we help our local engineers to grow. The Bill has proposed that if a foreign firm wants to register a consulting engineering firm, at least 51 per cent should be locals. We need to take it further and say that the 51 per cent of the directors must be Kenyan citizens by birth. We really must protect our industry. Right now, you see huge infrastructure projects being undertaken like the Thika Road, Mombasa Road, at the airport and all over the place. We want our engineers to gain not just by getting quite a big piece of that pie, but also to be able to get skills. I will be proposing an amendment that foreign engineers who come to work in this country, one of the things that they must leave behind together with their bid; they must present a clear programme of skills transfer, so that we do not have to always be depending on foreigners to get things moving. This is very important and is done in all the other countries. I am aware and alive to the fact that we now are in the East African Co-operation and we are the ones who stand to benefit because much as our overall numbers of engineers are not up to date, we are still much better off than our neighbours in the region. We want to export as much of our skills as possible. Still, let us make sure that the entry for foreigners is not as easy as it is now. Over the two decades that I have been practicing as an engineer, I have seen foreigners who come here as draftsmen with very little skills, over time, walking around in sites calling themselves engineers. I do not think it can happen to Kenyans who go to work in other countries and we cannot allow the export of our money and our resources in such an easy manner. I want to thank the Minister for bringing the Bill but I want to assure him that I will be asking for his support because I intend to propose very many amendments purely to enrich the Bill, so that Kenyan engineers who practice in this country can proudly feel that not only are they adding value to the affairs of this country, but are also helping Kenya to move to the attainment of Vision 2030. With those remarks, I support."
}