business

Schools, training deficient

Four prominent business leaders expressed their concern about the poor quality of education in Panama while speaking at a round table discussion held last Tuesday at the Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnología (Ulacit).

The event, entitled “Experiencias en Competitividad de Empresas Panameña,” featured Herman Bern, founder and CEO of Empresas Bern; Pedro Heilbron, executive president of Copa Airlines; Joseph Salterio,general manager of HSBC Panama; and Carlos Urriola, general manager of Manzanillo International Terminal (MIT). Alberto Diamond, president of KPMG Central America, acted as moderator.

All agreed that the lack of educated, skilled, bilingual workers in Panama put the country's competitiveness and economic growth at risk.

“In the next few years we are going to have a terrible lack of skilled workers. The demand for labor on the expansion of the Canal and real estate and port projects alone is going to be tremendous,” Urriola warned.

Bern, in anticipation of the coming labor crisis, has founded a hotel school and provided funding for language and technology training in some local schools.

MIT has invested in training its employees to make up for deficiencies in the nation's schools and universities. And Copa has formed an alliance with the government to create a flight school for airlines pilots.