Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente has urged continental engineers to take concrete measures to deal with their counterparts who do not respect ethics and professionalism.

Premier Ngirente was speaking at the African Engineering Conference, which opened on Monday in Kigali with focus on effective waste management on the continent.

According to Eng.  Ahmed Hamdy, the executive director of Scientific, Technical and Research Commission of the African Union, 90 per cent of waste comes from engineering processes.

Addressing the engineers from different African countries, Premier Ngirente expressed the need to crackdown on the unethical engineers whose substandard work he said costs governments.

"We also encourage you engineers to take concrete measures in dealing with engineers who do not respect ethics and professionalism. Many of them repeatedly get involved in fraudulent practices and deliver substandard work, which costs governments heavily,” he said.

"We should come up with the appropriate answer as to what the African engineering fraternity should do to create the confidence and trust within the system of governance.”

Citing the current state of rapid growth of African cities and the big amounts of waste generated, Ngirente said the theme of effective waste management was timely for this year’s engineers’ conference.

 "No country has ever developed without adequate engineers. We believe that one of Africa’s most important resources is the skills of its people. A well trained labour force is the single most important enabler of economic transformation for African countries,” he said.

Eng. Hamdy said waste management is one of the top five problems the mayors of the cities in Africa are facing due to limited funding.

The conference, that started on Monday, will run through to September 29, with the objective of drawing attention to the current diverse challenges facing waste management in Africa, and to consider the prospects for effective and sustainable development of this critical sector.

Informed persons and organisations in the waste management sector from all over Africa and the rest of the world will be holding interactions, share experiences and ideas, and brainstorm on how best to strategically and pragmatically address the challenges of waste management in order to generate effective and sustainable solutions.

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