Author: ABELA MSIKULA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: ARCHITECTS and Quantity Surveyors Registration Board (AQRB) is planning to start issuing Practicing Identity cards for its members in an effort to identify them and only have professionals implementing projects.
The AQRB Registrar, Arch. Edwin Nnunduma made the revelation in Dar es Salaam during the Board’s Annual Meeting, adding that the IDs will only be issued to active members.
“Active members are those who pay 100,000/- annual registration fee and the IDs will be in use starting next January. Thereafter, we will be encouraging employers to make sure they only hire professionals with the Board’s IDs,” said the Registrar.
However, he warned of stern legal measures against defiant employers, who will defy the order as stipulated in section 24 (i) and (c) of the Board’s Act of 2010.
IDs issuance will serve in controlling under-licensed and non-registered experts’ operations in the country.
Despite various techniques, he added, still the number of experts is down as of September this year; only 1,126 were in practice with 381 registered in companies.
The Board’s examination has been conducted twice a year so as to promote an increase in registered experts. Currently, its capacity is to register between 60 and 70 experts per year, and the target is to register at-least 80.
He added that since 2013 the Board has been running Continuing Professional Development (CPD) type of training, twice a year, in a bid to sharpen its experts’ knowledge and let them match with dramatic change in science and technology.
The Board looks forward to offering CPD programmes on quarterly-basis (four times a year), while at the same time introducing ‘Tailor Made Trainings’, also to be offered simultaneously (four times a year) with CPD, affirmed the Registrar.
