For four years now, Noelle Kamau* has been knocking on doors hoping one would open to let him practice as an engineer.
The impediment has always been a lack of clearance by the Engineers Board Kenya (EBK), the regulatory body for engineers in the country.
Now working as a plumber, the Water and Environmental Engineering graduate from Egerton University says it has been years of psychological torture.
One of his former classmates says he is grounded at home assisting in farming after growing weary of knocking on doors and landing menial jobs.
Yet another classmate says she has been freelancing in the private sector and agonises on the day the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) will come knocking.
This is the story of 200 engineering graduates from Egerton University that have been denied accreditation by the EBK on grounds that the programme is not registered. The group petitioned Parliament to intervene in their case and it was agreed that they go back to class for remedial classes starting this September.
“We are in September and there has been no official communication from the university which makes us wonder if the five years of pursuing the course were in vain,” says Juliet Atieno* who currently does online writing for clients.
By the time the group graduated in 2019, the programme had not received approval from the EBK following gaps in its curriculum content.
In March, Vice-Chancellor Isaac Kibwage told the legislators the university had since reviewed the course to meet EBK requirements for Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEEN).
He committed that the university would offer eight remedial courses at no extra cost starting September 2022 for bridging the gap between WEEN and CEEN.
The eight courses include Highway Geometric Design, Geotechnical Engineering, Structural Masonry Design, Pavement Design, Foundation Engineering, Theory of Structures III, Transport Engineering II and Urban Drainage & Flood Protection.
Academic Registrar Prof Mwanarusi said, in a response to a student’s request for an update concerning enrolling for the remedial courses, that the revised curriculum is undergoing internal processing before it is forwarded to CUE for a name change. Read more from Business Daily
