The fast-track program is a pilot project sponsored by the British government to help Indonesian civil engineers get international certification in just one year.

"There is a shortage of civil engineers in terms of quantity and quality, while President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo is pushing for infrastructure development," British Embassy consultant Prof. Scott Younger said on Tuesday.

The engineers need to have five to 25 years of experience to be included in the program. After obtaining the ICE certificates there is no obligation for them to work in Indonesia.

"We would actually be happy if they worked abroad then came back to Indonesia with more experience," Younger said.

The program started in 1993 when the British government was working with the Public Works Ministry and National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) to improve the quality of Indonesian civil engineers. It was later discontinued.

"There was the 1997-1998 crisis, then the 2001 bombings. There were travel warning for five years. We could not continue the program," Younger told thejakartapost.com.

Younger also noted that there were 200,000 civil engineers in 1991. In 2013, based on Public Works Ministry data, there were 600,000 engineers in Indonesia, but only 8,000 were certified and even fewer ICE certified.

Younger said Indonesian engineering education was not of international standards and so Indonesia-graduated engineers were not internationally recognized.

There was a British government program that joined up with prominent universities in Indonesia to fix the engineering curriculum in 1995, but it was halted due to political chaos in 1997 to 1998 and 2002 Bali bombings.

"We have worked on this project again since 2015, with universities like UI [University of Indonesia], ITB [Bandung Institute of Technology] and ITS [Sepuluh November Institute of Technology in Surabaya] to improve their curriculum. But whether to adopt it or not, we will leave it up to them," Younger said. (bbn)