/ 27 February 2009

Call for more engineers in SA

SA has had to go on a massive drive to lure engineering professionals due to the skills shortage in the country, the ECSA said on Friday.

South Africa has had to go on a massive drive to lure engineering professionals due to the skills shortage in the country, the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) said on Friday.

”The amount of work in progress far outweighs the number of engineers at our disposal expected to carry out the work,” said the council’s acting CEO, Professor Hu Hanrahan.

ECSA added that it supported the call by Consulting Engineers of South Africa (CESA) to bring in engineers retrenched as a result of the global financial crisis.

CESA said earlier this week that the current global crisis had seen many engineers laid off around the world and that this was an ideal opportunity to bring those skills back to South Africa.

”As a regulatory body, we are committed to working with all relevant parties to ensure that the much-needed skills in the engineering sector are sourced.

”Currently we are looking beyond our borders to register individuals to fill up the gap the industry is facing,” Hanrahan said.

The retrenchment of engineers in some regions was going to be a case of one region’s loss being South Africa’s gain, he said.

”We would like to absorb them,” said Hanrahan.

Currently figures by the Department of Labour indicated there were severe shortages in the civil, chemical and mechanical and other engineering sectors.

Unless urgent intervention measures were sought, the problems plaguing the industry would persist, ECSA said. — Sapa