Highly-skilled officers in the South African Navy were being poached with lucrative offers to work in the private sector and other countries, forcing the government to urgently adopt new retention strategies to stop the drain.

Naval officers with special skills were being offered at least four times more than their current salaries by recruitment agencies who cheekily put up camps outside naval bases such as Simon's Town to lure them to oil rigs in Nigeria, Australia and the private sector.

Rear Admiral Hanno Teuteberg, commander of the SAS Isandlwana *1, said, for example, his ship was currently operating with nine auxiliary watch keepers on board - the bare minimum sea-going standard. The full complement should be 16, he said.

Nonetheless, his ship and others in the naval fleet were operating optimally *2, Teuteberg said, but staff were having to work harder.

The situation was "very serious" *3, Minister of Defence Charles Nqakula said on Friday at his first media briefing since his appointment.

Speaking on board the SAS Isandlwana, Nqakula said the problem facing the navy was "the story of life facing South Africa at this time".

The situation, Nqakula said, had forced government to adopt a retention strategy with special focus on "scarce skills" *4.

The strategy included drawing on retired SANDF personnel and an arrangement with tertiary institutions - including one in Durban - to produce specialists in the naval field.

Nqakula also said the navy was aware that many whites were leaving the service because they were being overlooked in favour of blacks.

He said transformation did not mean simply replacing one group with another, but required a strategy which would see people from "lower bases being trained and moved to higher bases".

Nqakula said transformation was not just about human resources.

"We need to transform our material resources too *5," he said, adding that some of the navy's resources were 30 years old and needed to be replaced.

"Organised crime, on our soil, is using high technology to commit crime; there are pirates on the high seas We need to meet these challenges with superior technology *6."

• This article was originally published on page 5 of The Cape Times on October 13, 2008

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With acknowledgements to Cape Argus.