By Polycarp Machira , The Guardian
A QUARTER of the current 33,218 registered engineers were added to the books during the past three years, board officials say.
Bernard Kavishe, the registrar at the Engineers Registration Board (ERB), said in a briefing on the sector’s achievements during the past three years of President Samia Suluhu Hassan in leadership.
He said that the government invested in education, providing loans to technician level training, thus adding to greater output of skilled engineers, with ERB laying emphasis on efforts to empower engineers with practical training for fresh graduates.
The number of women registered projects rose from 99 in 2019 to 1000 in 2023, while ERB allocated 300m/- to train women in management and leadership, he said.
Works minister Innocent Bashungwa said that the government has built 25 roads with a total of 1,198.5 kilometres in the past three years, while 57 others adding to 3,794 kilometres are under construction.
Works minister Innocent Bashungwa made this affirmation that the government had constructed five airports and eight others are at advanced stages of construction, meanwhile five bridges have been built as several others are under construction.
A lot of construction projects have taken place in three years, especially in completing projects initiated by the preceding leader, he said, noting that women contractors in road projects from 2018/19 to 2022/23 obtained tenders valued at 3.1bn/- per year on average.
During that period the government-initiated plans to establish the School of Professional Engineering to enable stakeholders in the construction sector to access consultancy services, he stated.
Upwards of 500 engineers were trained through the Structured Engineers Apprenticeship Programme (SEAP) during the period, to equip them with auxiliary skills to become professional engineers able to carry out bigger projects, he said.
Rhoben Nkori, his counterpart at the Contractors Registration Board (CRB), said that earlier, local contractors' participation in development projects stood at 30 percent, while it is now pegged at slightly over 39 percent.
The board plans to extend training to contractors to uplift expertise in the sector, he said, hinting at plans to review local contractors’ registration to ensure they are locally based engineers.
Government efforts to support local contractors are a step in utilizing natural resources to bring about the desired development strides, while the government has come up with a local content strategy to empower local contractors so that they can handle development projects, he added.
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