Fragmented approach to training impacts skills development

In the SA airfreight and
aviation industries, the
available training is not able
to produce enough skilled
staff to overcome the severe
skills shortage, according to
Alwyn Rautenbach, MD of
Airlink International Cargo
and chairman of the Air
Cargo Operators’ Committee
(Acoc).
“It is almost impossible
to find suitably skilled staff,
and this lack of manpower
is not being reduced by the
training industry as it exists
in SA,” he said.
He is happy to admit
that there are certain
establishments that produce
top-notch courses – but there
are just too few to be able to
offer the wide spectrum of
everything that the freight
industry needs in training.
A major problem that
cannot be overcome,
according to Rautenbach, is
that the SA aviation industry
– indeed the freight industry
as a whole – is just not a
big enough marketplace
to support the necessary
quantity or quality of
training facilities.
And the training industry
itself suffers from what
Rautenbach describes as “the
bits and pieces” failing.
“The training market
doesn’t really give the broad
spectrum of knowledge that
is needed,” he told FTW.
“It’s composed of lots of
relatively small organisations
which are utterly incapable
of taking people far enough
along in skills, and at such a
level that they can take the
learners from the beginning
to the end of their career
path.”
There are just too many
courses-upon-courses,
Rautenbach suggested, but
with no final goal in sight.
“You end up sending lots
of people to lots of training
institutions to do lots of
specialised courses,” he said.
“But this is not what career
planning is all about.”
The utopia that SA is
highly unlikely ever to
see, he added, is a freight
academy or university –
taking pupils from absolute
novice standard to top
diploma level.
But the dream and
reality are poles apart, said
Rautenbach.