Works & Housing Minister tasks Engineering Council on regulation

The Minister of Works and Housing, Francis Asenso-Boakye, has called on the technical committees of the Engineering Council to use every legal means available to sanitise the industry practice and ensure proper regulation to secure the highest professional standards.

He made the call yesterday when he inaugurated six technical committees of the Engineering Council in Accra.

The Works and Housing Minister observed that though majority of engineers go through rigorous professional training to maintain high professional standards, some disregard the need for standards and specification.

This situation, he said, had resulted in the collapse of buildings and other forms of infrastructure, with projects failing to meet their design lives due to poor engineering.

According to him, the provision of infrastructural base to support the country’s growth requires forward thinking and innovative engineering input. He noted that it is therefore expedient that technical committees work with all relevant stakeholders, locally and internationally, to meet global engineering standards.

“Our engineers cannot make much impact if they operate in isolation. They do not only have to interact with the public, but also with their international counterparts with whom they can share knowledge and experiences to enrich the profession in the country,” the Minister said.

With increasing technological advancement in engineering, Mr Asenso-Boakye challenged the Education and Training Committee to develop and promote educational programmes that will stir up the innovative capacities of engineers towards addressing existing challenges in the country’s efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

Committees

The inaugurated six technical committees were the Finance and Administration, Licence and Registration, Standards and Professional Practice, Public and International Affairs, Disciplinary, Ethics and Legal and Education and Training.

The Chairman of the Licensing and Registration Committee, Dr Kwame Boakye, urged members of all the committees to strive to build a strong engineering community guided by the ethos and principles of the Engineering Council.

The Engineering Council is a regulatory body under the Ministry of Works and Housing, mandated by the Council’s Regulations, 2020 (L.I. 2410) to, among other things, to certify and license individuals. It also appropriates corporate engineering bodies for initial and continuing registration as stipulated by law under the Engineering Council Act, 2011 (Act 819) while ensuring that members undertake works in accordance with the highest standards of engineering practice in the country.