We're genuine: Gweru flight school

A GWERU-BASED private aviation school, Zimbabwe Flight Centre Academy (ZFCA), has rubbished reports that it was a bogus institution, accusing its competitors of leading the smear campaign.

ZFCA director William Mazango told NewsDay Weekender that the training programmes offered by the institution were genuine, adding that they had so far offered theoretical training to over 300 students and referred them to South African aviation schools for practicals.

Mazango described reports that they had no physical offices and had duped students of their hardearned cash as malicious.

"We believe that people who are making these allegations are our competitors who are out to destroy us.

"We conduct ourselves in a transparent manner and in any case, if we had defrauded anyone, they should have reported to the police," he said.

Last week, NewsDay Weekender was inundated with calls from people who alleged that they had been defrauded by the academy.

However, Mazango said: "Since we established this academy we have never had a situation where somebody pays and failed to get services. We go as far as booking flight tickets for our students as they travel to South Africa.

"We registered as a company in 2015 but because of lack of infrastructure we had to engage South African partners — U-Fly Training Academy and TR Eagle Air (Pvt) Ltd.

"Locally we offer online training to our students so that when they go to South Africa, they are ready to embark on practicals."

"We have traceable reference of students. We work with parents and always engage them through the whole recruitment and training programme," he said.