Nigeria to Train Female Pilots

Lagos: To arrest the continuous loss of the nation’s pilots to other countries and improve the paucity of skilled manpower in the industry, aviation authorities have decided to train more female pilots and engineers to rejuvenate the industry, which has been predicted to lose more than 70 per cent of its management personnel to retirement and migration in the next five years.
The Director-General of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Dr. Harold Demuren toldaviation correspondents at the weekend that the industry has decided to be training women as pilots and engineers because they are likely to stay and work in Nigeria after their training.
“We’ve come out with a marshal plan to make sure we have adequate training going on but the sad thing is that even when you train, when they come back, because of our salary structure, compared with what obtains abroad, people particularly from middle East, China, and South-East Asia, India, who are buying a lot of aeroplanes come and take our pilots and engineers,” Demuren said.
Demuren stated that experience in the industry had shown that it is male pilots and engineers that are taken away after being trained in Nigeria. “You know, men are like rolling stones, we go all around, but the females, when they are here, they get married, have their children, have their families and they stay,” Demuren said, describing the females as “very stable”.
09/07/07 Chinedu Eze/This Day/AllAfrica.com, US