Prakash Per­sad

Last week, I in­di­cat­ed that the typ­i­cal UWI en­gi­neer­ing grad­u­ate, gen­er­al­ly, would have been giv­en a good the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tion of the en­gi­neer­ing sci­ence that com­pris­es his/her spe­cif­ic dis­ci­pline.To be­come prac­tis­ing en­gi­neers, a pe­ri­od of in­dus­tri­al train­ing/in­tern­ship is nec­es­sary.There is no for­mal sys­tem for that in T&T, as is the case in de­vel­oped coun­tries.Here, reg­is­tra­tion is pure­ly vol­un­tary. Fail­ure to change this sit­u­a­tion will as­sured­ly re­sult in cat­a­stroph­ic and cost­ly con­se­quences.

UWI, UTT, APETT, in­dus­try and the state must col­lec­tive­ly bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this par­lous state of af­fairs. They must come to­geth­er to en­sure that the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion is put in place to en­sure that en­gi­neers are re­quired to com­plete a min­i­mum and req­ui­site pe­ri­od of train­ing. This needs to be cer­ti­fied and pro­mul­gat­ed as nec­es­sary in or­der to prac­tice as en­gi­neers.Would we al­low physi­cians who have not com­plet­ed their in­tern­ship to prac­tise? Of course, the an­swer would be a re­sound­ing no.

Then why do we al­low en­gi­neers to de­sign, su­per­vise, and build com­plex and cost­ly in­fra­struc­ture or op­er­ate and main­tain large plants with train­ing that may be in­com­plete?

En­gi­neer­ing er­rors through faulty de­sign or in­ad­e­quate op­er­a­tion and main­te­nance prac­tices may re­sult in loss of life, dam­age to the en­vi­ron­ment and peo­ples' liveli­hoods. Re­cent ex­am­ples of oil spills, in­dus­tri­al fires, build­ing col­laps­es, flood­ing and ve­hi­cle re­calls eas­i­ly come to mind.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers