Rakon boss says higher-level skills also needed

By DANIEL RIORDAN

The Government's training and education initiatives have been welcomed, but with significant reservations, by an Auckland high-tech manufacturer and industry training official.

Included in the Budget (but announced on Wednesday) is an additional $14 million over the next four years for industry training, lifting the Industry Training Fund to $89 million in the next financial year and to $91 million in 2003-04 and beyond.

Last weekend, the Government announced it was spending an extra $41 million over the next four years to double the number of modern apprenticeships - targeted largely at younger people - to 6000 by December next year.

The tertiary sector gets an extra $214 million over four years and $7 million will be spent giving work experience to high school students.

A Maori trade training programme is also being introduced.

David Grant, general manager of Mt Wellington-based Rakon Industries, which employs 350 staff to make frequency crystals for GPS (global positioning system) receivers, said the extra money was fine but much more needed to be done.

One of the biggest problems facing Rakon was a shortage of skilled staff, and that would not be addressed by the Government's training initiatives, which cater to the lower ranks of the apprenticeship system, he said.

"One of the real things difficult for us as a company is getting higher-level people, and I'm not sure the Budget is going to deliver what we need."

Rakon employs 50-60 highly skilled engineering staff and wants to hire more but can't find them.

Grant says he has faced skilled worker shortages for a long time.

"There's a lot of industries that need skills development at the lower levels, but the important thing for us trying to be an innovative company is really getting the skills at the higher levels.

"That's a factor that holds us back - not being able to find highly capable technical people, engineers in particular."

Grant is a member of the Electrotechnology Industry Training Organisation and has sat on the advisory committees for several tertiary institutions.

He welcomed greater funding at tertiary level but said more needed to be done to attract students away from commerce and law into engineering and science.

He also had concerns over those New Zealanders who were attracted into tertiary education in engineering missing out to overseas students who returned home once qualified.

Although lauding the Government's goals of trying to produce graduates to meet the country's innovation needs, he said that to date there were still too many words and not enough meat to the strategy.

"It's not clear to me how that's going to work. The thrust is there and I think it's good, but without understanding the detail, it's difficult to comment."

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