Accra, Nov. 30, GNA - Government must expedite action on the enactment of a comprehensive engineering act in order to regulate engineering practice in the country and ensure that unprofessional practice did not have a negative impact on the national development agenda, Dr Essel Ben Hagan, President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers, said on Thursday.

"The Engineering Act would restrict the creation, preparation authorisation and provision of engineering products and services to only those registered under the Act and a person shall not operate an engineering firm unless the person is registered," Dr Hagan said. Dr. Hagan was speaking at the 38th Presidential address organised by the Ghana Institution of Engineers in Accra on the theme: "Sustaining the 3e Nexus in Ghana: Engineering, Energy and Economic growth." He said the nation could not effectively engender and harness its engineering potentials to support the energy sector for economic growth without a clear-cut and enabled institutional and legal framework to regulate engineering practice.

Dr. Hagan also called for the establishment of a Engineering Council, which would help regulate the practice. "The close connection between engineering and energy services needs to be effectively harnessed to support the nation's economic growth and this can be achieved through the pursuit of capacity building in indigenous engineering firms, facilitating innovation in the energy sector and regulation of engineering practice."

Dr Hagan said the nation required a technologically prepared workforce to address the challenges posed by the planned expansion of the energy sector.

He urged indigenous engineering firms to participate in continuing education programmes and other postgraduate training schemes to ensure that their engineering staff would be able to use new technologies especially those relating to the energy sector.

"The benefits of such training to economic growth would be manifested in improved productivity of engineers and increase in the speed at which the nation can adopt modern technologies to provide quality engineering services to the energy sector," he said Dr Hagan appealed to the government and the private sector to provide adequate resources for research institutions in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the universities to enable them to develop innovative technologies in renewable energy that could exploit indigenous resources to complement conventional energy supply systems. The first 27 copies of the address booklet were auctioned for GH=A2 5,450.