Let’s read in between the lines

Engineers and built environment professionals have been in focus in the past week for all the bad reasons.

The Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Hon. Atta Akyea is said to have mentioned among other issues that priority will be given to foreign engineers on key government projects because of the inability of local engineers to execute projects to the required qualitative standards.

He said that “if you hire Ghanaian engineers, they wouldn’t want to do the work right. They cut corners, they inflate figures”. This very damning statement was made when he met the Engineering Council of Ghana. Clearly Ghanaians are hearing right; that the blame for the litany of poorly executed projects around the country should be put at the doorstep of the Ghanaian Engineer and of course every local professional but not the politician. This is the Minister’s reason for esteeming foreign engineers over the locals. Could we as a people also push for a taste of his own medicine? 

For some reason one would forgive Hon. Atta Akyea, the Honorable Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing to an extent. The statement clearly mixed up the roles of design, supervision, costing and execution of projects. Engineers and most Built Environment professionals i.e. Procurement Consultants, Contractors, Engineers etc. can tell the difference which may be hazy for non-built environment participants.

However, when Hon. Yaw Osafo Marfo who is also an Engineer by training made the same statement to the GhIE, this clearly signaled a serious problem. This piece would try and make it clearer and also deal with some really structural problems in our socio-political spheres. This debate has gone on in the corridors of politics and that of built environment professionals and making it public could start the exorcism of this canker. 

The Engineering Council and the Architects Registration Council are two Regulatory bodies that play a critical part in regulating the practice of Engineering and Architecture respectively. The Engineering Council of Ghana (ECG) and the Architects Registration Council of Ghana (ARC) are government regulatory bodies for Engineers and Architects established through the two Decrees 1969, NLCD 404 and NLCD 357 respectively. 

The Councils which are Agencies of the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, are responsible for the registration of persons within the Engineering and Architectural Professions, guiding the professions and promoting the standards of education, training and practice towards a sustainable Built Environment.

These two agencies are distinctively different from the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) and the Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA). These two institutions can simply be likened to a professional association which took advantage of the two decrees to establish an association to maintain standards in the practice of their professions whilst successive governments did not see the need to set up their corresponding regulatory bodies.

The Engineering council was only set up in 2015 and a board was established with Ing Wise Ametepe as the first Registrar. It is worth noting that the ARC was established much earlier in 1997 when Arc. Akofio Sowah and Arc. Kenneth Ampretwum, of blessed memory the President and Honorary Secretary respectively at the time, decided to go ahead without government support to set up the ARC. Prof. Ralph Mills Tettey was named as the first Registrar and the Ghana Institute of Architects used subscriptions to support this Government Agency for a long time.

With this note, it is clear that since independence Engineers and Architects have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that they are more concerned about making sure that our infrastructure is prepared by qualified professionals and properly supervised than any government in the history of this country.  But the notes of suspicion are growing louder; that the blame for poor quality of our infrastructure in Ghana is to be placed at the feet of Engineers.

Whilst Engineers, Architects and other professionals cannot be fully exonerated from this, it is important that we identify other partners-in-crime and start the debate as to why this continue to persist, the absence of effective regulation and legal framework to sanction poorly performing engineers and all other participants for that matter.

The first step towards setting up independent and effective regulatory bodies is to give them the necessary resources and financial support. The Engineering Council has a small office in the Ministry and reliable information given is that their financial allocation for 2016 was about a meagre Ghs 11,000.

The Architects Registration Council continue to practically perch at the premises of the Ghana Institute of Architects who they are supposed to regulate and have also struggled with subventions from government over the years.

The initial key areas that should be looked at are as follows:

1. The culture of quality assurance and quality control in our public works and the reasons for which a high proportion of public infrastructure is poor compared to the private sector is not farfetched. The cycle of decision making and ownership is very clear and ambiguous. The opportunity to keep within budget is very key to the success of private investment. Public Private partnerships is the way forward and would give value for money. The legal framework for infrastructure corporation would have to be evolved with all stakeholders in order to improve the quality of infrastructure in Ghana.
 

2. The GhIE has recently published a Ghana Infrastructure Report Card 2016. A brilliant piece of documentation of the state of our infrastructure. They took the cue from their counterparts in the United States of America and Canada. The key objective of this to facilitate an engagement with elected officials, political leaders and the general public in order to affect policy and investments in the nation’s infrastructure.

The report looked at roads, bridges, power and water supply, their state, maintenance and how sustainable they are. The reason for the poor quality of roads are many; substandard competence, lack of capacity and equipment, delayed payments, high interest rates, poor maintenance culture, poor and inappropriate use of materials. The Engineers in both public and private sector should carry some blame in some of these areas but it would be completely implausible to exonerate the politician and elected leaders.
 

3. The affinity for foreign professionals is growing in Ghana especially in the private sector. Some come along with various project funds and may possible be part of funding conditions for projects. The laws of this country requires that they partner with locally registered professionals so that they can make inputs on local building codes and regulations as well as providing statutory concurrence and endorsements of documents for presentation for Permit Approvals.

In Architectural Projects for instance there has been a huge influx of Architects from all over the world. This certainly enriches our landscape, however there is an increase in temperate architecture and the effect on our services i.e. power demands due to poor ventilation that come with such designs and other demands inconsistent with our Building Codes. We cannot have an open door policy without a strong regulatory regime and that is what is worrying about the Minister’s assertions.
 

4. The Minister’s mixing-up of the roles and responsibilities cannot be overlooked. We have always argued whether Ministerial roles are principally managerial and policy that may not require a reasonable practical knowledge in those fields. Article 78 (1) of the Constitution says that “Ministers of State shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of Parliament from among members of Parliament or persons qualified to be elected as members of Parliament, except that the majority of Ministers of State shall be appointed from among members of Parliament”. This is omnibus and lumps all ministers and their explicit roles together except the Attorney General whose roles are clearly spelt out in Article 88 (1-6). As a country that needs to develop, we have failed to back our intent with our constitution.
 

5. “The Ministry has the overall responsibility for the initiation, the formulation, implementation and co-ordination of policies and programmes for the systematic development of the country’s infrastructure requirements in respect of Works, Housing, Water Supply and Sanitation, Hydrology and Flood Control Systems to ensure efficiency of the sector” (http://www.mwrwh.gov.gh/). Of course the Minister has a team Chief Directors and experts to work with but this system has neither been progressive nor ineffective and has to be reviewed.
 

6. There are structural weaknesses in the supervising ministries that need to be addressed as well. The licensing agency for professionals fall under the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. Unfortunately, most of the works are executed in other Ministries such as Local Government and Rural Development under which the MMDAs fall, Highways etc. Generally, one would expect that these ministries should be able to vet faulting professionals and authorize sanctions.

For instance, when the Melcom Shopping Mall collapsed in Achimota the investigations by the MMDAs and MLGRD should have revealed the professionals and contractors at fault and recommended sanctions from the MWRWH. This calls for good coordination between these ministries. We however know that this takes forever to materialize. This is clearly a political decision to be made.
 

7. The strong invisible hand of politicians is everywhere in the Construction industry especially in the execution of public works especially at the MMDAs. The traditional leaders also fall in this same category and their word and influence is almost law. Staff are appointed to the various assemblies touting political affiliations instead of their objective to ensure that the laws are obeyed. We all see the resulting quality of the structures built by various assemblies and services rendered. Some structures built by some assemblies have collapsed due to poor construction quality.

They influence selection of contractors and push inordinate payments. This is gradually affecting morale and the quality of supervision by Engineers and Architects in the MMDAs and apathy is the order. Some staff are penalized and transferred for ensuring that the right thing is done. As long as these contractors flaunt their connections and contacts with political and traditional leaders, we should not expect the status quo to change and the blame on professionals would not matter. 

8. The assemblies also cannot go without blame. Permit Applications are froth with corruption and thievery in some assemblies. Development control has become private investments for poorly trained staff some with doubtful qualification that sometimes is embarrassing. Ghana will never win with this crucible of unacceptable practices, human resource, political influences, lack of compliances to regulations and best practices that has made other countries a beauty to experience.

A frank debate is the way forward. There has been a lot of advocacy and reports that a clean politician is certainly an oxymoron in our part of the world. A simple clean and honest blame sharing would have been candid in the discussions with the Engineers by our politicians. For once this issue has vividly been brought to the fore and we should not lose steam until something significant is done towards finding a solution. Let the community of construction participants have a frank debate. The stakeholders are truly many and they must all share the blame.

The writer is a member of the Ghana Institute of Architects