Retention of skills a headache for NCAA

The interim executive director of the Namibia Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Reinhard Gartner, says the Namibian reality is the major scarcity of qualified and experienced personnel in all sectors of the aviation industry and the authority.Gartner was speaking during a media excursion of the NCAA operations in the capital on Thursday.He mentioned that there is a small pool of candidates in the country meeting the requirements as a result of the small population and those that are qualified are offered lucrative contracts abroad.He added that currently, they have 148 staff members of an approved 223 staff complement.“It is crazy how experts are being soaked up whom we have contracted. If we do not keep up with pay scales they just go somewhere else,” said Gartner, who further noted that the cost of training and qualifications is extremely high and time-consuming.He explained that a flight operations inspector must have at least flown an aircraft for 5 000 hours and they need an inspector who is someone who flew large aeroplanes.Brain drainGartner said once they have acquired one, he or she has to go for certain training and needs to be suitably qualified with over a decade of experience, which means they are marketable overseas “and then the rich airlines just soak up these guys”.He said last week NCAA lost a specialised person to Angola because they offered more money.He further noted that Namibia does not have an institution that offers any training in aircraft maintenance engineering, explaining that the training is done over a prolonged period thus aviation experts cannot be trained overnight.“Besides restrictive immigration laws and regulations, I subscribe to the notion that Namibians should get the first opportunities but if the skills are not there then they are simply not there,” he stressed.He said skills need to be imported to train locals, sign them out according to International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) rules “and then the expert goes back again and we have our own”.“We must make sure that we retain these skills, that is why when it comes to the importation and retention of skills we have a big challenge,” Gartner said.Gartner also said the NCAA training budget for 2020/21 is N$3.9 million, adding that they do their own in-house training with experts they bring from outside. - Nampa

Retention of skills a headache for NCAA

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