As part of moves to sanitise the building and construction industries to minimise building collapse and shoddy construction jobs, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, COREN, has stressed the urgency for a law to make owners of buildings that collapse as a result of using quacks or cheap materials and kill people to be visited with capital punishment.

President of the institution, Kashim Ali, likened the situation to that of medical doctors who were charged with murder if, as a result of carelessness or quackery, they cause the death of their patients.

He spoke yesterday at a news briefing to herald the 23rd Engineering Assembly scheduled for August 19 and 20 in Abuja as part of COREN’s efforts to update members’ knowledge, share ideas on emerging issues in engineering and to network.

Its theme is “Commercialising Engineering: An Imperative for National Development.”

Noting that he was underscoring the need for a major deterrent such as death penalty for building collapse in Nigeria because they were thoroughly embarrassed by the incidence, Ali said: “We have advocated that anybody who builds a house or structure that collapses and kills people should be killed.

So, if that law is there, people who are not trained will not venture into it. If somebody who is a doctor commits quackery and kills somebody, they will charge him or her for murder, but not in the case of collapsed buildings; nobody is charged.

“Often, because people who have these structures always have a way around the situation, nobody deals with them. That is why we are urging the National Assembly to go a step further.”

He also lamented that although COREN had been using the police to deal with the incidence of building collapse in the past, it had not had the desired impact because “we found that the people who they charged to court were only the poor people. It’s that mason who calls himself an engineer that was being taken to court. The real person who got a million naira project would not go to court.”

He explained that it was to find a more capable institution to handle the situation that his organisation decided to partner with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission, ICPC.

According to Ali, their apparent fixation with quackery was because it was the greatest challenge to the engineering profession.

Still in pursuance of an industry free of irregularities, COREN has ordered all registrable firms to register with it, saying it was now compulsory and any defaulter would be handed over to the ICPC.

“COREN recently signed an MoU with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission, ICPC, to prosecute people who commit infraction of COREN Act and are not on the register.

“Directly connected to the above is the recent order of Council that Registry must commence the licensing of engineering firms to practise in Nigeria.

“By this, it is now compulsory for the following categories of engineering firms to procure COREN licence to practice: Engineering consulting firms; engineering construction firms; engineering manufacturing/production firms; engineering maintenance and service providers; engineering inspection, testing and laboratory service firms; and vendors of engineering machineries, equipment, plants and materials, etc,” Ali said.

•Text courtesy of THISDAY. Photo shows COREN President Engr. Kashim A. Ali.