ENGIE and SUEZ welcome female students to promote engineering careers marking International Women’s Day

ENGIE and SUEZ have both been long-term partners of Qatar and Oman respectively in the areas of power, water and waste management. As part of their engagement towards training & education and to mark International Women’s Day, they jointly invited female students in Oman and in Qatar to visit facilities they operate and to meet women engineers.

In Oman, 30 female students from Sultan Qaboos University and the Caledonian College of Engineering were invited to visit Barka municipal waste landfill operated by SUEZ in Oman, as well as Barka 4, the Sultanate’s largest water desalination plant, owned by a consortium that includes, among others, ENGIE and SUEZ.

In Qatar, 70 female students from Qatar University and the French school Lycée Voltaire visited the site of Al Karanaa Lagoons, a major soil depollution project, covering a surface of more than 4.5 km² where wastewater from Doha has been discharged for years, and that was recently rehabilitated by SUEZ, in respect with the local biodiversity. Students later attended a conference where they were able to meet women engineers from ENGIE and SUEZ to discuss their career paths and their roles in their firms. These events were organized as part of the 4^th edition of the ‘Girls on the Move’ Week, which aims to expose young women to the diversity of professional opportunities in technical industries. Encouraging young ladies to enter these fields is the ambition of the French association ‘Elles Bougent’, of which both ENGIE and SUEZ are members.

For ENGIE, giving young local women the opportunity to discover the energy industry is important for two reasons: first, because, as a regional player, we want women to be part of the localization of jobs in our industry. Second, because, globally, ENGIE has been actively promoting gender diversity and women empowerment, with ambitious targets, including that 50% of the ENGIE managers will have to be women by 2030. When I see all this positive energy, enthusiasm and commitment of all these girls students  who have chosen engineering and science to build their future , I am confident that girls will be part of this changing world” commented Florence Fontani, EVP  of Strategy, Communications & ESR at ENGIE Middle East, South & Central Asia and Turkey.

“At SUEZ, promoting gender diversity is at the heart of the Group’s road map. As a regional signatory of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), established by UN Global Compact and UN Women, we aim to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the region. Today, women represent 18% of our executive employees in Middle East and we are pursuing our action plan to increase the number of women in our teams. The integration of local population is also an integral part of our Human Resource policy for the region. Today in Oman, for example, we have more than 48% Omanis in our workforce and we are progressively working on increasing this number”, commented Lemjed Bouzekri, Human Resources Director for SUEZ Middle East & Central Asia.

ENGIE has been present in Qatar and Oman for decades and is currently the largest independent power and water producer in the Gulf countries with a capacity of over 30GW of power and 5.8 million m3/day of desalinated water. ENGIE is also active in the field of energy services through its subsidiary ENGIE Cofely Mannai ensuring the facilities management of prestigious buildings and infrastructures in Qatar. SUEZ has a 14-year presence in Oman and in Qatar both in water and waste management. SUEZ has built over fifteen drinking water and wastewater treatment plants, including Oman largest desalination plant (281,000 m3 water/day) and the largest wastewater recycling plant in Qatar (280,000 m3/day). The group also oversees the operation of 4 engineered landfills which receive 60% of Oman total waste production.