Change of plan for aspirant air pressure officers who failed health check

Goalposts have been moved – quickly it seems – for a element of the SA Air Drive (SAAF) officers’ forming course (OFC).

The shift is confirmed in a CAF (Chief Air Drive) sign signed by Lieutenant-Basic Wiseman Mbambo and comes within the wake of 9 of 16 SAAF personnel chosen for course 02/2023 failing the stipulated health check requirement.

The three-star’s sign, which defenceWeb has seen, reads partly: “The SAAF ought to think about affording these aspirant officers a chance to develop into officer’s course certified. It will be in the most effective pursuits of the organisation and certainly its members, significantly those that handed the health check, to be allowed to proceed with the OFC as deliberate”.

“A once-off waiver must be granted to the 9 learners who failed the health check. These members ought to regularly and progressively bodily put together themselves to undertake and go the health check, two months into the OFC.

“Members who fail the health check however go the course can be recognised as having handed the OFC however would nonetheless be required to efficiently undertake and go the health check at their respective items to be totally OFC certified for commissioning/appointment as officers.”

Mbambo’s sign, dated 20 July, ends by asking CDFP (Chief Director Drive Preparation) to “guarantee” OFC 02/2023 “continues as deliberate to keep away from making a backlog”.

African Defence Evaluation (ADR) Director Darren Olivier requested how greater than half the course failed health necessities so quickly after passing them throughout fundamentals. “That signifies deeper points and I don’t imagine waiving the requirement is the proper strategy. It creates a nasty precedent,” he stated.

“That is additionally unfair to candidates who failed previous programs for not sustaining the required degree of health, in addition to those that labored exhausting to keep up requirements regardless of their course workload. Requirements exist for a motive, waiving them is a slippery slope. On the similar time the query must be requested about what their unit management was doing to let it attain this level. It is a management failure at a number of ranges,” he maintains.