LETTERS: MUCH attention has been directed recently on the issue of the abolishment of the critical allowance, which has since been postponed by the government.
One observation that can be made is the unity of the doctors in fighting for their rights to obtain reasonable pay for their efforts.
Senior and junior doctors stood together which led to the government having to listen to this united front.
Is this the case for the other professions? Sadly, no. I’m referring to the engineering profession and the private sector.
As a registered engineer with the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM), I observe that there is an alarming situation in the industry — the weak enforcement of the Registration of Engineers Act 1967 (the latest amendment was in 2015).
It is mandatory for engineers to register with BEM to allow them to legally work as either a Graduate Engineer (GE), Professional Engineer (PE) or a Professional Engineer with Practising Certificate (PEPC). All of these categories of Registered Engineers are mentioned in the Act.
For any engineer to register as a GE, he must have graduated with an engineering degree accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Council or from any of the Washington Accord country signatories.
Those with non-recognised engineering degrees will have problems for the purpose of this basic GE registration.
Not only that, even Engineering Technologists are not legally qualified to register as a GE (they need a top-up course to allow them to do so).
From the early stage of becoming a GE, there should already have been some sort of strict quality control in place.
From then on, for a GE to become a PE, an engineer must have obtained a minimum of three years’ experience as a GE. He must then pass the Professional Assessment Examination or the Professional Interview to demonstrate his engineering competency.
Next, to become a PEPC, an engineer must have attained his PE status, and then must pass the Professional Competency Examination, to demonstrate his competency and capacity to become Submitting Persons to Local Authorities for Certificate of Completion and Compliance, and to legally set up Engineering Consultancy Practices.
As you can see, there are certain minimum requirements that must be fulfilled to become registered engineers. The value of becoming registered engineers is not currently being appreciated in the industry.
The question is, how good is the enforcement of this basic legal requirement to register as registered engineers in actual practice?
Sadly, this legal requirement is not considered to be a critical factor (or even worse, may not even be of any consideration at all) by various companies in selecting potential talent in the market to fill up the vacancies for the roles of engineers within the said companies.
Even worse, you may find that certain companies even hire non-engineering graduates to fill up the positions as engineers.
When this happens, there are just simply many graduates (registered engineers and unregistered/unrecognised engineers) in the market.
This will pull down the level of salary that fresh graduate engineers can demand, simply because there are just too many applicants — engineers or non-registered engineers, or non-engineering graduates — for the available engineering jobs.
I urge BEM as the regulatory body for engineers to fully enforce this mandatory provision in the REA, and make sure that the engineering fraternity adheres to the registration requirements of the REA.
Collaborations with other relevant organisations such as the Construction Industry Development Board, Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia and the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia, together with the government may be required for this purpose.
By fully enforcing this, it will ensure that only recognised and registered engineering graduates are legally able to work as engineers in the country.
MOHD KAMAL HAZIQ
KAMARUZAMAN
Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times