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Will Prime Minister Modi bother himself to replicate a record from his Gujarat days and enact a law to make engineers accountable for their professional conduct?
This is the critical question engaging the minds of disaster management specialists here after the Nepal tragedy proved once again it is not the quake, but poorly constructed buildings that kill.
HIGH-RISK ZONE
Along with Nepal, many regions in north and northeast India fall in the high-risk seismic zone. The common denominator marking the vulnerability profile here is the abysmal quality of construction.
The Gujarat government under Modi is credited with having moved first to regulate the construction sector engineers, post-2001 Bhuj quake. It passed the Gujarat Professional Civil Engineers Act, 2006.
That has remained the only bright spot in a long history of writing draft laws, including at the Centre, top domain experts told BusinessLine .
Professional institutions and organisations had submitted a draft Engineers Bill to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2007.
DRAFT BILL MOOTED
The draft Bill aims to regulate the practice of engineering and engineers and makes them accountable for their professional conducts, the experts said.
The Bill stipulated mandatory registration/certification of professional engineers. It also proposed setting up an ‘Indian Council of Engineers.’
Many professions have national level bodies with regulatory roles with respect to the code of ethics.
Medical Council of India, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and Council of Architects are examples.
The proposed council for engineers would have statutory status. It would maintain a national and international register of professional engineers and associate professional engineers.
It would also regulate the engineering profession. All this would help Indian engineers globally and create certified quality standards.
NO APPROVAL YET
It is learnt that the Ministry has circulated draft Bill through a Cabinet note to other ministries concerned for approval.
After Cabinet approval, the Bill had to be placed before Parliament. But the Cabinet approval is yet to come, only after which it can go to Parliament for ratification.
Although laws exist for dealing with unprofessional conduct of civil and structural engineers in the construction industry, they are not so effective.
For instance, the law enforcement system does not have the expertise to judge whether shortcomings of technical decisions of an engineers were deliberate errors. The courts generally depend on experts, i.e, peer groups, for advice on technical issues.
Hence, the need for strict provisions for fixing responsibilities of violators need, the experts said.
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