These are the engineers Eskom needs right now

President Cyril Ramaphosa and civil society organisations have raised concerns over the lack of skills at the failing national power utility Eskom.

Addressing the nation on Monday night (25 July), Ramaphosa said that key to solving South Africa’s energy crisis and putting an end to load shedding, is ensuring that Eskom has the necessary technical skills it needs.

As part of the government’s new energy plan to address the power crisis, he said the state would urgently boost the recruitment of skilled workers at Eskom.

Edmund Nxumalo, the acting chief executive officer of the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) told CapeTalk that the shortage of critical skills can be seen across Eskom’s operations -in the electrical, mechanical, industrial and chemical spheres of power plants.

Nxumalo said that some less-qualified candidate engineers, or engineers with little experience compared to others, have managed to find themselves in positions at state-owned entities – including Eskom and Transnet.

He said that they were able to do so by evading the peer review process involved in becoming a member of the Engineering Council of South Africa.

Joining the council is elective and acts as a supervisory tool. He added that regulating the council is the best way to ensure that engineers in the industry are kept under check and investigations into any possible unsound behaviour are made.

The ECSA currently comprises 34,000 engineers with experience levels ranging between three to 30 years, said Nxumalo.

To be an engineer in South Africa, prospective engineers need to complete a four-year bachelor’s degree in either a BscEng or BTech at a valid tertiary education institution.

After graduation, engineers become candidate engineers in firms, and after a specific level of experience is achieved (often 2 to 3 years), they can be deemed full-fledged engineers.

They can elect to join the council, where they will be interviewed by a board of more experienced engineers in line with international standards, added Nxumalo.

Unlike accounting or law, this board does not involve any tests but rather consistently ensures that engineers are up to date with developments in the industry through Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses, said Nxumalo.

He said Eskom is not registered with the council because registration is done on an individual level, not through firms.

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