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The consulting engineering industry has the capability and the capacity to assist and support the department in rebuilding this internal technical capacity. It is indeed tragic that we should be importing costly experts who, I would argue, are not familiar with our local conditions and would find themselves having to refer to local experts anyway. The offer from the industry still stands and we are hopeful that the minister will take the time to talk to the industry so that we can jointly develop a win-win strategy for sustainably addressing these capacity challenges.
Vollie Brink( Pr Eng, MSAICE, MPMISA, MFEASA) Independent consultant and regular contributor to Plumbing Africa Manglin Pillay has hit the nail on the head and his comments can be substantiated. I am busy mentoring and training a number of BEE engineers and technologists to build capacity, but there are still‘ old’, highly experienced engineers around. If we give away the prime job opportunities by bringing in engineers from another non-South African country, then we are actually‘ killing’ our own capacity and future. Every South African engineer is capable of creating large numbers of job opportunities from projects down the line. We have the local experience, we have local engineering expertise and knowledge, and we have local standards— why is it ignored and not used? Why must we create jobs for people from Italy and not for our own engineers? We can do it ourselves. We have excellent universities and colleges to educate and train our own engineers; if we‘ give away’ our jobs then where will they work? In Italy? The problem is that‘ we’ appoint‘ non-engineers’ in management positions.
Sandisa Maqubela Corporate spokesperson and manager for stakeholder relations and marketing at the Engineering Council of South Africa In response to your request for comment, ECSA has taken a decision not to address the department through a public forum. If there are issues to be addressed( which seems to be the case), it will be courteous for us to contact them directly and deliberate further to solicit some solutions on the issue of available engineering skills versus the demands of the developing South African economy. I trust that you will find the above in order!
Manglin Pillay, CEO of SAICE.
Editor’ s comment
Needless to say, we did not“ find the above in order”.
Appreciating the diplomatic attempt to avoid the real issue, we replied asking for confirmation that“ all engineers working in South Africa must be registered with ECSA”.‘ Yes’ or‘ No’, and a further question as to how ECSA handled the Cuban engineers that were imported into South Africa.
No response was received to this communication at the time of going to print— sad but true! PA
“ It illustrates once again the DWS’ s disregard for local industry body concerns.” www. plumbingafrica. co. za March 2017 Volume 23 I Number 1