Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) now seeks to establish Kenya School of Engineering which will contribute to high standards infrastructural projects in the country.
According to EBK registrar/CEO Eng Margret Ogai the institution will provide facilities and opportunities for learning, professional exposure and skills acquisition, it will also offer continuous professional development programmes for engineers.
EBK also seeks to register more professional engineers in the country. Every year Kenya records high number of students who study engineering courses but most of them do not register to be professional engineers after graduating from various universities.
According to Beth Mbatia of EBK Kenya still lacks enough engineers who have strength and power of economic growth.
Mbatia who was speaking to Education News says EBK records indicate that in the year 2024 the country had 22, 141 graduate engineers, 3,107 professional engineers and 571 consulting engineers, the statistics shows that many graduate engineers do not continue with the career after university.
She says the graduate engineers do not qualify to call themselves engineers as they have no power and supervisory responsibility to do the necessary work.
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The failure by the graduates to register themselves as engineers has led to big gap in engineering field, according to United Nations Kenya needs 10,000 engineers to have strength and power of economic growth.
There are also gender gaps, not many women have been able to join the engineering field, and there are less than 7 per cent women in professional and consulting engineering category.
“They study until university level then later join other fields, this sometimes is caused by hostile environment, we encourage them to register with us for support,” Mbatia says.
The Board is now targeting to register 10000 professional engineers in next five years.
For one to be recognised as a professional engineer, he or she should be registered by EBK, they should have background experience, to have achieved successful projects and professional engineers should supervise their work.
They should have attended conference that gives graduate engineer, guidance on how to prepare report of their work to access a panel interview, it takes three to four months for one to apply and be identified as a professional engineer.
The Engineers Act 2011 prohibits the use of the term “engineer” by unregistered or unlicensed persons.
The Board has consistently noted the illegal use of the title of Engineer or Eng before persons’ names that are not registered by EBK as professional engineers or consulting engineers as provided under section 26 of Engineers Act 2011.
By Obegi Malack
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