‘Too Few Technicians’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 3

‘Too Few Technicians’

CN Z Press Association) WELLINGTON, Sept. 9. New Zealand has not realised th<.t the world had become a technological one. and that it wou’d get nowhere without technicians, Mr C. F. Martindale. head of the school of engineering at the Wellington Polytechnic, said today.

It would be 1973 before New Zealand attained the minimum ratio of technicians to technologists, he said. Opening the annual confer-

ence of the Institute of Engineering Technicians, he said the field was wide open, and he felt like “riding a horse through the streets telling school-leavers of the almost limitless field.” It was useless to. have 200 technologists leaving univer sities yearly when there were no technicians to work under them. Ratios of technicians to technologists varied throughout the world, but it was conceded that the U.S.S.R. led the world with more than 10 to 1.

New Zealand could ' not turn out the bare minimum of 2 to 1. Mr Martindale said. The result was that technologists had to do the work.

Mr Martindale said the training of technicians at present had many flaws, the chief defect being that men with almost no practical ex-

perience could become fully qualified. He suggested that the course be divided into academic and practical sections. Both phases would have to be passed before a technician qualified.