Skills retention in aviation industry a major challenge

The loss of highly competitive and necessary skills in the aviation industry remains of major concern to government, says Anwar Gany, chief director: civil aviation in the Department of Transport. Speaking at the monthly Transport Forum in Johannesburg recently, Gany said training for the aviation industry was not just an extremely expensive endeavour, but was also posing a challenge in how the country was to keep the trained skills. “We are competing with dollars and euros, and it is human nature to go where the wage package is the best. Because our training in South Africa is of such a high calibre, we are finding that our skills are being depleted by other countries.” He said while South Africa had enough capacity to address its own needs, it was however imperative that the aviation industry looked at ways of keeping skills in South Africa. “And we are not just talking pilots here. When we take air traffic controllers, South Africa has become renowned for its training and we have some of the best controllers in the world. But we are finding ourselves investing in an individual for several years, just for that person to be snapped up by another country.” He said this was not an issue the transport industry faced alone, with nurses, doctors and teachers also being poached on a large scale. Gany said much dialogue was taking place within the DoT to find long-term solutions to the loss of skills in the aviation industry, where specialised training was imperative. “Government is not sitting back and watching this happen. There are processes in place to address this problem and to find a workable solution for everyone involved.”