The City of Tshwane’s shortage of capacity in critical departments such as water and sanitation as well as energy and electricity has been attributed to an ageing engineering workforce, with 70% of cohorts aged between 40 and 65 years.
Corporate and Shared Services MMC Dana Wannenburg pointed out that the City had vacancies in the water and sanitation department standing at 58% while the roads and transport department vacancies were at 53%.
The energy and electricity department’s vacancies were sitting at 43% while the regional operations and co-ordination department’s were at 42%.
Wannenburg said the problem was compounded by an ageing engineering workforce and that it was expected to be addressed through the recently launched professional engineering programme.
The programme was a collaboration between the City and the national Department of Water and Sanitation.
It is aimed at professionalising and building engineering capacity within critical service delivery departments.
Wannenburg said the programme would be aligned to the requirements of the Engineering Council of South Africa with a strong focus on mentorship from experienced council-registered engineers.
“Most municipalities across the country are struggling to recruit qualified engineers who are Engineering Council of South Africa-registered, especially female engineers. As with other professional occupations, this registration certifies a level of skills and capability that maintains important standards,” he said.
Municipalities, he said, were heavily dependent on these professional engineering standards in the execution of their constitutional mandates for service delivery.
He said the poor state of municipal infrastructure and capability across the country pointed to a lack of internal professional engineering capacity.
Wannenburg said: “Without professional engineers, cities will continue to rely on expensive service providers and lose the institutional memory and capacity to respond quickly to critical issues, like water bursts and power outages.”
He said a shortage of capacity was compounded by the fact that there were currently only a few Engineering Council of South Africa-registered engineers in the City.
Wannenburg said: “To address these gaps, the Tshwane Leadership and Management Academy developed the Scarce and Critical Skills Strategy Framework. The successful Artisan Programme is a key component of this framework, training and placing over 100 apprentices every year.”
The first stage of the programme would see the City receiving 10 engineer candidates from the Department of Water and Sanitation Academy working to obtain their professional registration with the Engineering Council of South Africa.
“These engineers will be placed on key projects across service delivery departments to gain the necessary experience for registration,” he said.
Furthermore, he said, the programme would ensure that any engineering service providers would also become mentors, which was a key requirement for doing business with the City.
The City would also partner with other metros such as Cape Town, eThekwini and Johannesburg to share lessons learnt and best practices in producing professional engineers.
Pretoria News