Building Collapse: COREN inaugurates committee to reduce quackery

BY Victoria Ogunrinde

The Council of Registered Engineers (COREN) has inaugurated a committee, ‘Engineering Regulation Monitoring’, saddled with the responsibility to detect and clampdown on quacks from engineering sites across the country.

National President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) and chairman of COREN, Mr Ali Rabiu, in an interactive session with journalists in Ilorin disclosed that the new Executive Order signed by the President Muhammadu Buhari, has given the body the power to chase out quacks from engineering profession, adding that the committee would visit engineering sites to detect unqualified workers in the sites.

Rabiu, who commended President Buhari for signing the Executive Order number 5, said, “Before the new law was signed, we could do nothing, but the new law has given us more power to chase out quacks from our profession.

“That is why we inaugurated Engineering Regulation Monitoring. They will go to sites to monitor personnel; they monitor whether they are engineers, technologists, technicians or craftsmen and if quacks are detected, we will take them to a court of competent jurisdiction and prosecute them.”

He added that the government through the promulgation of the new executive order had streamlined award of contracts, and that it had made it mandatory that any contract below N2bn should not be awarded to foreigners.

Rabiu who noted that there were capable engineering companies that could handle contracts in the country said, “The government is making efforts to streamline the award of contracts with the promulgation of that Executive Order number 5. Expatriates do get job and deliver; our engineers can equally do the same but the issue is presentation and packaging.

“My advice to our engineering companies is to take advantage of this and package their companies very well because this is about competition,” he counselled.

On efforts to check building collapse, Rabiu stated that a mechanism had been put in place to check who was responsible for any infraction either in building or any engineering project.

He advised professionals to join politics instead of agitating that their members be appointed as minister or commissioner.