25 Feb 2015

Effective April 1, 2015, engineers who operate without a practicing certificate will be in contravention of Section 19 (7) of the Engineers Registration Act (ERA).

The minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Mr Nonofo Molefhi, told the media on February 23 that his ministry had taken steps to transform the construction industry through self-regulation.

Accordingly, Mr Molefhi said appropriate penalties would be imposed by the relevant authority in order to safeguard public safety and discourage unauthorized engineers. 

He expressed concern that government was constantly under public criticism for failing to deliver on some of the key public infrastructure projects intended to support the economy and other social needs. 

He said while the government was responsible for all the developments executed through public funds; “we rely on the private sector for delivery of such infrastructural developments.”

Therefore, given the contribution of the construction industry to the country’s development, the poor delivery of infrastructure projects was a reflection on the performance of the industry in general, and that had been a source of concern to government.

“For a long time now the construction industry has operated in a vacuum without any regulatory mechanism to safeguard public interest against poor performing service providers and those with unethical conducts,” said the minister, adding that the end result had been poor execution of government projects. 

Those employed to augment government capacity, the minister said often required policing by government officials which had proved difficult due to resource constraints. 

He also expressed concern that policing service providers was not a normal practice, but it seemed that service providers often failed to deliver if such mechanism was not put in place.

The minister said the situation had continued to impact negatively on the delivery of government infrastructure to a point where all government projects were characterised by costs overruns, late delivery and poor quality.

He added that the general public had also suffered from these effects which were motivated by selfish motives from some service providers.

Therefore, as a way to improve efficiency and cab undesirable conduct in the construction and engineering industry, the government enacted a law in 1998 - the Engineers Registration Act, which created the Engineers’ Registration Board (ERB) in 2010.

The purpose, Mr Molefhi said was; to give a cloud to the profession, to ensure that the services rendered by the profession were at a high pedestal and to ensure that the public has confidence in the projects which have been put up.

“That is value for money, and of course we provide opportunity for individual roles of engineers involved in the projects, whether they are in government or in the private sector,” he pointed out.

“The Act has not been implemented for some time now because we needed to come to a point where it becomes mandatory that every engineer in this country subscribes to a code - a code of conduct or a code of principles to which the practice is anchored,” he said.

Therefore, he said between 1998 and now, there were processes and discussions, and around 2008, there were also amendments to the Act until June 1, 2014 when the Engineers’ Registration (Amendment) Act came into operation. 

“But the fundamental which today we need to progress to is that we want to make it mandatory as the law provides, with effect from April 1, 2015; every engineer practicing in Botswana becomes a registered person with the ERB,” he added.

In the past, the minister said there were difficulties associated with the high costs as perceived by the engineers themselves, namely; costs of registration, costs of membership which he said the registration board had also determined or the law had prescribed.

Over the last few months, Mr Molefhi said ERB reconsidered the thresholds and came to a conclusion that they needed to be revised downwards and the revision was shared with the ministry.

“We have subsequently shared those downward reductions with the cabinet and we have since obtained cabinet approval, and now it is appropriate to proceed to implement the Act,” he said.

The registration is divided into three levels, which are; professional engineers, registered engineers and graduate engineers; these are primarily the three categories as prescribed in the registration. 

In the previous dispensation, Mr Molefhi said there was an exemption granted to engineers working for government, however, it had been considered prudent for the profession that they too become compliant with the new law; as such, the law was amended to say engineers working for Botswana government will also be required to register. 

For that reason, he said it will be an across the board registration without exemptions.

In terms of the fees; for both professional and registered engineers, the application fee is P1500 00, while the processing fee is P2500.

However, professional engineers will pay P2500 for renewal of their annual practicing certificates charges, whilst registered engineers will pay P1500.

Graduate engineers, since they are just out of tertiary schools and learning their ropes, will pay a combined application and processing fee of P500 and an annual practicing certificate charge of P1000. ENDS