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15/01/2025
Underpaid and Unpaid Maintenance / Crew Members contributing to Human Factor imposes Flight Safety risk in Nepal.
There's a wave of petitions inside and across nations in the European Union to ban any form of "unpaid internships". With the aviation world tipping their safety and wage bars higher, the question of when the Nepalese Aviation Sector will follow suit and start paying the people who work in the airline industry better is a question to mull over.
There's already a dark sky of obsequiousness hanging over the Nepalese Aviation Sector. Many aspiring pilots who have trained meticulously for their jobs( which they probably love and excel at) say that there is, firstly a great deal of fawning to do in order to secure a job. And even when one makes it as a pilot, the specter of not getting paid regularly is frightening, not to say palpable.
Many educational consultancies in Nepal often encourage students to pursue Aeronautical Engineering, prospects of which are grim, to say the least in this Himalayan Country. There are 3 prospects as an aeronautical engineer-manufacture, research or development- all of which are virtually non-existent in Nepal. Some aeronautical engineers have confided to Aviation in Nepal News about how they were restricted to photocopying and documentation works often without the ability to pay even for their immediate exigencies- all the while being branded as poster boys for the field of engineering they pursued.
Graduated Aircraft Maintenance Engineer Students are often found to be involved in "internships' ' - a fancy word that allows for the sufferance of "unpaid labour". In 2019, NACE analyzed internships of 4000 seniors across 470 member colleges and universities and found that underprivileged people bear the brunt of "internships" as the wealthy could afford to not be paid whilst still working. The people of lower economic strife who often have to take large swathes of loans to pursue their careers can be found to not even merit a "salary", let alone find some solace in decent pay.
Underpaid/ never paid maintenance technicians, a disbursement of salary that is as irregular as the weather itself, and a lack of a proper way to voice the discomforts of technical staff, who can be horribly underpaid, are some of the more significant problems within some noteworthy corners of Nepalese Aviation. It is often said that a good working environment is what helps an industry grow. Can we now hazard a guess why the Nepalese aviation sector gets so much flak?
-AVIATION NEPAL NEWS
