Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) has expressed its dismay with President Jacob Zuma’s recent cabinet reshuffle.

The association, which represents over 500 companies which employ over 23000 people across the consulting engineering sector, argues that the reshuffle, which the association accepts as being the prerogative of the president, runs the risk of exacerbating the country’s already troubled economic situation.

It also sends out a disturbing message on rewarding mediocrity and punishing excellence. “The latter is counter-intuitive to the culture we seek to establish among young engineering professionals who will be responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of our infrastructure for generations to come,” CESA said in a statement.

CESA argues that the reshuffle flies in the face of what Zuma called a need for more effectiveness and efficiency, with the president dispensing of the very performance needed to achieve this objective. “As engineers we believe that a better approach would have been to dispense of the non-performers and bring onboard more performers,” the association said.

“The industry is already experiencing difficulty amidst corruption, appointment of consulting engineering firms that have little or no track record of delivery and even mafia style criminal activity halting construction activity. The latter not only puts lives at risk but also affects job security in a sector where limited employment opportunities currently exist due to the already low levels of capital investment in infrastructure.”

The junk status downgrade investment rating by Standard & Poor’s, limits investor confidence further and will not only hamper economic growth, but will further limit the engineering industry’s ability to create more jobs.

This comes at a time when skilled engineering practitioners from various technical disciplines are being retrenched, despite engineering having been identified as one of South Africa’s most scarce skills.

“The jury of course is always out on whether new appointees will be future star performers and whether some ministers would have learnt from their past shortcomings. As an industry committed to the success and wellbeing of our country, in support of initiatives towards constructive and sustainable economic transformation, we offer our support to partner with those ministries entrusted with infrastructure delivery,” CESA concluded.