Tanzania Engineer

Today's Tanzania's newspaper with largest circulation was carrying an advertisement by the Engineers Registration Board on its front page. It was a long, eight-part message. It announced many changes to be carried out in the next few days, virtually overhauling the system that had been in place hitherto.

I am an engineer myself, and have been shifting uncomfortably whenever the talk of what engineers in this country are doing. Almost fifty years after independence, spewing out engineers from our prestiguous University of Dar-es-Salaam, we are still having foreign companies doing almost everything, from road works to ferries, from installing microwave networks to installing processing plants.

Where are those hundreds of engineers who graduated every year, with growing number of enrolments year after year (this is an unfortunate trait of universities and colleges in our land, the first thing that comes to the minds of chief executive officers with respect to growth is to increase the number of enrolments while classes, lecturers and other facilities remain unchanged--year after year). Yes, where are all these engineers? Someone may have done some tracer study but the findings are not all that widely known. Many had resorted to carrying out other moneymaking activities, not engineering, such as trading. They flourished, no wonder, because someone with brains to graduate in engineering is likely to find business a piece of cake. If you were to ask them, they would look at you in the eye, say the system in place is hostile, unsupportive etc. to engineers. They would be correct, though they would be saying that with a pang of conscience.

It is therefore with joy that I read an advert that signals regulators taking their correct part to bring respect back to engineering carreer in this country. This first stage may look like it is making things difficult for engineers (raised fees, requirement to possess certificate indicating you were tested and found fit for the job, etc.)

It has also come at the right time, when the iron and coal deposits in Mchuchuma and Kiwira are about to start being exploited, a feat expected to revive the dead iron and steel industry which hardly has a pulse left at present.

Any engineer in his right mind would appreciate ERB move.