Tuesday, 20 March 2012

We need Engineers to maintain our infrastructure once the 'chinaman' has left.

The ongoing accreditation tussle between the Engineering Registration Board and Engineering graduates from Masinde Muliro University has more than meets the eye.
Despite pushing for recognition by the ERB for over four years, the engineering students as well as graduates from Masinde Muliro University are still having sleepless nights. According to the ERB the varsity’s engineering curriculum has flaws hence the board’s decision to decline recognition of the varsity’s products as engineers. This has led to students who graduated between 2008 and 2011 going to the court to seek justice.
I would try to picture the devastation that a student can experience after going through six years of training and examining in an engineering class only to graduate and lack employment opportunity because some board does not recognise him. From my point of view, this is unfair, noting the amount of testing and trials the students go through before being promoted to the following academic year and later being awarded the title ‘Graduate.’
Tarmacking with recognised papers in Kenya today is an uphill task regardless of the course you undertook, nonetheless I wouldn’t expect tarmacking with unrecognised papers to be easier. These qualified, ambitious, yet unrecognised brains from the faculty of engineering in our eighth Public University are crying for help and it’s up to each and every stakeholder to save the show because we need engineers to facilitate national infrastructural growth.
It is my opinionated view that someone has been intentionally standing between these engineers and their dreams. It’s beats my understanding how such a simple and clear issue can take the University, The ERB and the Commission for Higher Education so many years-and still counting to resolve. Every year since 2008, there have been demonstrations by engineering students in Masinde Muliro University airing the same old grievance- recognise us. These demonstrations have always been silenced by a cheap yet unkempt promise of change by relevant authorities.
Now, these students’ patience has grown thinner with time and the ultimate solution seems to lie in court.  Yesterday, these ex-students filed a petition arguing that prior to elevation of Masinde Muliro University to a fully-fledged university, it used to operate as a satellite campus of Moi University and the inherited the curriculum from Moi. They therefore view ERB’s decision to decline recognising the varsity’s curriculum as discriminatory.
In Kenya it is illegal for a graduate to practise or call himself an engineer if he or she is not registered with ERB. It therefore means for these ex-students to earn a living through their course they must work under particular registered engineers. This makes me think that there must be someone, most probably in the ERB and registered, who intends to benefit from exploiting these fresh brains. Otherwise what else could be cooking behind the scenes?
Let’s think about it, today we are importing engineers from China to construct roads for us, how long do we (as Kenya) intend to import engineers yet every year we award thousands of our young engineers with degrees in engineering only to deny them the channel to develop career wise. Really, Are we headed in the right direction?
 At the same time, I find it vague when the board argues that the quality of lecturers, coursework, workshops and other training facilities are the reasons behind their decline to register the graduates. I believe this conclusion has been arrived at without first checking the real situation on ground. Since 2007 when these protests started, the University has taken drastic measures to improve facilities in the varsity. I personally, have been in Masinde Muliro and if there is a single faculty I know of that is full of doctors and professors it got to be the faculty of Engineering.
As we await the court ruling and the mentioning of the case scheduled for March 27, let us ask ourselves (as Kenyans) Is this how we intend to curb unemployment in Kenya, training our youth for over five years later to deny them the capacity to gain employment?
The future of our country is more important than any individual’s interest and we shall ever remain vigilant of those ill-minded Kenyans willing to gash the dreams of upcoming engineers.    
       

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