Mr Yap Ong Heng, Director General of Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has observed that Ghana’s aviation industry had a promising future.

He said efforts being made by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) to ensure safety and security and plans by the Ghana Airports Company Limited to develop airports in the country as well as other infrastructural developments were guarantees that Ghana would “certainly see a bright future in aviation”.

Mr Yap, on a day’s visit to Ghana said, he was happy to visit Ghana for the first time, and his second visit to Africa since assuming office in 2009.

He said Singapore and Ghana enjoyed a long-standing relationship as evidenced by the training programmes offered by the Singapore Aviation Academy (SAA).

Mr Yap said the academy had trained over 3,000 people, including about 130 Ghanaians and looked forward to increasing its alumni base in Ghana.

He made the observation at a cocktail and dinner organised by the GCAA and SAA for facilitators, who are in Ghana for a week's training programme on “Air Worthiness”, to afford them an opportunity to meet alumni of the Academy while in Ghana.

Mr Yap announced that SAA had decided to extend its training programmes to cover the rest of Africa, but now had about 25 fellowships across the continent and offered on-site training programmes, which would be done twice every year.

So far they, had already done one in Kenya and with the on-going week-long programme at the Ghana Civil Aviation Training Academy (GATA) being the second.

Mr Willie Orhin, Deputy Director General (Finance and Administration), GCAA stated that CAAS and GCAA had a lot in common, the main one being their training academies, and expressed the hope that they would continue to collaborate.

“We are looking forward to fruitful collaboration between the two institutions; we have a lot to learn from each other. We want a situation where GATA, with its facilities can train people locally, and where instructors from SAA will come to GATA to train people,” he added.

Mr Orhin said Ghana, in her quest to build an aviation hub for the West African Sub-Region, must invest more in training and explained that the collaboration with Singapore would benefit Ghana, by helping to reduce costs of training and ensuring that Ghana had capable personnel to handle the infrastructure put in place in the industry.