Parents of engineering students want board disbanded
Engineering students at the University of Nairobi. Parents from Igembe in Meru County with students pursuing engineering courses in public universities have urged the government to disband the Engineering Board of Kenya (EBK). They say EBK as currently constituted was faulty as it does not include deans of respective universities that teach engineering. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- They claim the board which is blocking young engineers from being registered.
- Mr Erastus Mururu said that the EBK as currently constituted was faulty as it does not include deans of respective universities that teach engineering.
- He further alleged that the same engineers have influenced the crafting of policies in the institutions to ensure that engineering consultancy has replaced employment of young graduates.
- To avert a looming crisis in universities, Mururu said that the government should investigate and dismantle EBK membership to ensure fair play.
Parents from Igembe in Meru County with students undertaking engineering courses in public universities have appealed to the government to disband the Engineering Board of Kenya (EBK).
They claim the board is blocking young engineers from being registered.
Speaking to Nation.co.ke on behalf of other parents who had met to chart a way forward concerning the issue, Mr Erastus Mururu said that the EBK as currently constituted was faulty as it does not include deans of respective universities that teach engineering.
He said that the board was composed of consulting engineers whose core business was private profiteering by creating an artificial shortage of registered engineers to allow them to enjoy a monopoly in the lucrative government tenders.
He further alleged that the same engineers have influenced the crafting of policies in the institutions to ensure that engineering consultancy has replaced employment of young graduates in order to advance their benefits at the expense of the taxpayers.
ARTIFICIAL SHORTAGE
Mr Mururu added that the artificial shortage occasioned by this board is such that Kenya is home to less than 2,000 engineers as opposed to Tanzania and Uganda, which have more than 10,000 engineers though Kenya has a large number of engineering graduates.
The ultimate effect of this, he said, is that Kenya stands to lose in the integration of the East African states and that EBK will thus compromise efforts to attain Vision 2030 due to a lack of engineers to support the economy.
He added that it was unfortunate that EBK had no capacity to assess the suitability of modern engineering courses such as telecommunication instrumentation and control, water engineering, soil engineering, among others, which are market-driven in the modern world.
He said that EBK as it stands is out to stifle innovation and invention by youths as it advances a private profiteering mission in discharging its mandate as a regulatory body in the practice of engineering.
He added that the government as a custodian of public policy and the rule of law has an inescapable duty to protect the institutions of higher learning and the youth from this body.
To avert a looming crisis in universities, Mururu said that the government should investigate and dismantle EBK membership to ensure fair play and to save the youth the agony they are subjected to by the body.
