COREN to register foreign engineers
The Council for Registration of Engineers in Nigeria (COREN) has decided to have all expatriate engineers registered alongside their Nigerian counterparts.
The council said it took the decision owing to many inadequacies discovered amongst some foreign engineers and contractors working in Nigeria.
Chairman of Cross River State branch of the Nigeria Society of Engineers, Ayip Nsed Akunjom, disclosed this in an interview with journalists in Calabar.
Akunjom stressed that many foreign engineers have been discovered to have compromised work or engineering standards thereby leading to several colossal damages in the country.
“This accounts for the reason why the Calabar branch of Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) is holding a one-week workshop to review its Memorandum of Association as well as its Article of Association.
It also accounts for why COREN is now taking a very serious step to ensure that it gets all engineers registered irrespective of the country where the engineer comes from to be registered as a way of monitoring them,” he said.
Akunjom said it was demoralising that both state and federal governments preferred to do business with foreign engineering firms who do not even have the experience and technical ability of local engineers.
He said foreign engineers were not better than local engineers, adding that cases of collapsed buildings, bridges, failed culverts and caving of roads are often traceable to foreign engineering firms.
“This is because they compromise standards and execute shoddy contracts and maximise their gains at the country’s detriment,” he said.
He blamed the political class for the woes suffered in the profession, adding that many of the engineering firms in the country operate under the auspices of some powerful politicians with no capacity to undertake construction jobs.
The NSE boss frowned at the perceived marginalization by Cross River and the federal governments of its members in the awards of contracts.
The society called on the Cross River State House of Assembly to be alive to its responsibility of ensuring that local engineers were no longer marginalized by state government.
Akunjom expressed surprise that the state government does not allow the society to know about its super highway and Bakassi deep sea port projects.
He said the society wants encouragement through provision of equipment and contracts same way foreign nations support theirs which is why they are brought into the country.