Relief may be on the way for the engineering sector

While the latest report by the National Treasury on the performance at local government level indicates that during the previous year there has been a degree of improvement in capital spending patterns on infrastructure, the lack of sufficient professional skills remains a major problem.

The South African Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice), in a scorecard on the state of South Africa’s infrastructure, already warned in 2006 that far too little was being spent on the maintenance of existing infrastructure.

In June this year, Saice’s executive director David Botha was quoted as saying that he thinks matters have worsened since the compilation of the scorecard.

At the time of a recent visit to the Eastern Cape, said Botha, it was found that a municipality such as Buffalo City did not have a single professional engineer in its employ.

In Mthatha 19 of its 22 pump stations were not in operation, with the result that raw sewage flowed directly into rivers.

While technical staff were doing their utmost, the expertise of professional engineers was essential for effective maintenance programmes.

Treasury expressed the opinion in its report that local authorities were greatly underspending on repair and maintenance work. In the nine months preceding 31 March this year, municipalities spent only 4.1% of their total budgets on repair and maintenance.

This is a slight improvement on the 0.5% in the corresponding period of the previous budget year, but still way under what is required.

Botha, in stressing the importance of properly trained skilled personnel, said maintenance work “is an art, a science, which cannot be done haphazardly.

“You have to understand the lifetime of every piece of infrastructure, that the tar on streets dries and disintegrates if water remains on the surface as a result of blocked storm-water systems. And concrete crumbles if improper substances like wastewater flow over it.

“You cannot only fix that which breaks. You have to keep your hand on infrastructure – like an animal that needs care every day.”

The shortage of skilled staff was the most common thread in the Saice score card – from water treatment, dumping site management to electricity reticulation.



Light in the tunnel

But there may be a degree of light at the end of the tunnel for the skills shortage problem.

Some 60 top female maths and science students from high schools in Cape Town have been partnered with mentors at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

It is part of a campaign to attract more women to engineering as a career option.

The mentorships have been set up by the Western Cape division of Girl-Engineers, a recently formed branch of South African Women in Engineering (SAWomEng).

The girls come from seven local schools where UCT students gave presentations on engineering to those interested in becoming involved in the mentorship programme.

Privileged and under-privileged schools were targeted.

There are already plans being made to expand the reach of the programme in 2010.

Volunteer co-ordinator Emily Schuiling, a third-year student, was recently reported as saying girls can approach the mentors in an effort to get answers to their problems, and communication is mainly via SMS.

SAWomEng co-founders Mabohlale Mampuru and Naadiya Moosajee said that early targeting of girls is essential to efforts to increase the number of women in the field of engineering.

“To do that by merely speaking to those who are already studying, is to preach to the converted,” Mampuru said.

“We need to advertise engineering as a potential career choice,” she said, and added that as long as one works hard, it is not difficult to succeed as a woman
in engineering.

However, male dominance in the industry is overwhelming. At one job site in Cape Town where she was working as a building contractor, Mampuru was the only woman among 300 workers and engineers.

Moosajee says the problem is that many girls have not heard of engineering as a career choice. At her own all-girls high school, the teachers talked about beauty school and secretarial work. Engineering was never discussed as a career opportunity for women.

Sarah Kiggundu, the Girl-Engineering co-ordinator for the Western Cape, says that next year the organisation hopes to expand the programme beyond Cape Town to high schools in the rest of the province.

Maintenance work “is an art, a science, which cannot be done haphazardly”