Buhari assents to COREN Amendment Act 2019
President Muhammadu Buhari has assented to the Engineers Registration Amendment Act, 2019.
The Act gives constitutional backing to the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) absolute power to regulate the sector.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang disclosed this on Friday to State House correspondents in Abuja.
The Act is coming barely a week after a school building collapsed in Lagos state and two other buildings collapsed in Ibadan, Oyo state, sending over 100 lives to their early graves.
Enang explained that the amendment broadens the powers of COREN with far-reaching powers of prosecution of infractions, regulating industrial training of engineers, capacity building of local content in the engineering industry among others.
He noted that the new law grants COREN powers to prosecute any person or firm found to have contravened the provisions of the Act in a court of competent jurisdiction.
The Act will also oversee industrial training schemes for engineering practitioners and students while ensuring capacity building and monitoring local content development in the Nigerian engineering industry through mandatory attachment of Nigerians to expatriate engineers on major projects to understudy them from inception.
Other prospects of the new Act ensure that all foreign engineering firms establish their design offices in Nigeria, including granting compulsory attestation to all expatriate quota for engineering practitioners.
The Act equally empowers COREN to regulate turnkey projecst, that there are no qualified and competent Nigerians for the job in question at the time of application and that granting of the expatriate quota shall be contingent on training of such number of persons as may be required for the execution of the job.
“By the assent to this amendment it ensures that, before being allowed to practice in Nigeria, such foreign engineering practitioners will be granted work permit, register with the council and obtain such licenses as may be required from time to time.
“The Act further admits into the council the following: Nigerian Association of Technologists in Engineering, Nigerian Society of Engineering Technicians and Nigerian Association of Engineering Craftsmen and one person each appointed to represent the Association for Consulting Engineering in Nigeria, Federation of Construction Industry in Nigeria, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria and armed Forces in rotation, among other functions,” the SSA stated.
