The Mercury reports that the decision by the eThekwini Municipality to call retired engineers to rejoin the City’s employ has been welcomed by experts who said it would professionalise decision-making, boost the maintenance of infrastructure and ensure that projects being undertaken were completed on time and were operational.

Organisations representing engineering disciplines and professionals, in reaction to the City’s call, noted that municipalities across the country had realised that expertise was sorely lacking, which undermined their operations, especially maintenance. The eThekwini Metro recently issued an Expression of Interest call for retired professional engineers and technologists to supplement water and sanitation engineering capacity and to provide support to engineering mentorship programmes. The programme was spearheaded by the Water and Sanitation Unit and sought to draw from the expertise of retired engineers and technologists in civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering skills, the municipality explained. The retired professionals, it said, would be required to provide their expertise in strategic initiatives and projects, while others would provide support to the City’s engineering mentorship programmes. Steven Kaplan of the SA Institute of Civil Engineering (Saice) welcomed the move and said that research had shown that since 2005 the numbers of professionally registered individuals (highly skilled and registered engineers) had dropped significantly, while the number of young engineers (in need of mentoring and not registered) had increased dramatically over the years.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thami Magubane at The Mercury

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