By Monday Ijeh
Abuja – The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), has called for the resuscitation of Technical Colleges to guarantee adequate training of craftsmen in the country.
Mr Kashim Ali, the President of COREN made the call on Wednesday in Abuja in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
He said the call has become necessary following the deplorable state of the colleges across the country, and to meet the growing demand for the services of craftsmen.
He said the advocacy to get the technical colleges working by COREN started about 10 years ago.
“Members of the council went to their various constituencies to see the status of the technical colleges in the country.
“I am very unhappy to announce that the story we got from the reports were harrowing with situations where workshops, even some roofs have been blown off and many have been rendered uninhabitable.
“We met laboratories that were just there in name and others that were labelled just for the name, workshop and that is the only reason you will know that they are workshops.
“This exercise covered the whole of the country and it generated a lot of discussions with recommendations made to the state governors,” he said.
Ali said COREN had written the state governors making passionate appeal to resuscitate the Technical Colleges in their states.
According to him, many of them have not responded till now, and the work that should be done by Nigerians are now being done by foreigners.
“If you go to Lagos, Ogun and most states in the South-West, there is a lot of work going on, but the low level of work that generates money is being done by foreigners.
“Even now, if you go up North, the factories in states like Katsina, Sokoto and Kano are already employing such workers to do stone work because training for craftsmen stopped long time ago.
“So we have been engaging government on the development and we still want to take it a step higher by calling on stakeholders to discuss the way forward,” he added.