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Institute of Engineers of Kenya (IEK)- Women's Chapter
Eng. Njeri Mburu began by highlighting the successes that Kiambu County has achieved under her leadership as a County Executive. Her team which comprises of 250 people has been keen on building efficiency (good design, proper supervision) and this has seen prices of implementing projects reduce substantially from Kshs 5million to Kshs 2million. She has held on to the notion of continuous improvement, hence upon completion of any project her team always does an evaluation to learn from successes and failures.
She highlighted that Kiambu County has several facilities to promote women including Biashara Fund (targeting women groups), Bursary fund (targeting vunerable groups where Kshs 310million disbursed to date). In addition, a total of 700 water tanks have been bought to ease water supply in the county. In her department, 4 out of 16 engineers are women and she offers internship opportunities targeting women. On renewable energy, the County is partnering with UNHABITAT to train women to make lanterns while the county is also investing in street-lighting to enhance security.
Eng. Emelda, the IEK WEC Chair, began by illustrating a recent success at her workspace under her leadership where she successfully negotiated to secure a piece of land at Nairobi Hospital for substation setup. This guided her discussion where she highlighted that a time has come where women are no longer flower girls but they can also guide decisions. She highlighted the challenges women in engineering are facing in their positions and her hope for the future. She then welcomed the PS Gender, Mrs Zeinab Hussein to deliver her speech.
CS Zeinab started by appreciating the role the WEC leadership has played in starting the forum for women in IEK. She expressed the apologies for CS Public Service, Youth and Gender affairs for not being able to attend and proceeded to read her speech.