ABDUL RASHEED AZAD
ISLAMABAD: The National Productivity Organization (NPO) has decided to launch “National Productivity Movement” in a bid to create awareness on the use of modern innovative techniques and technology in various sectors of the country’s economy, which is essential for the promotion of sustainable productivity.
This was stated by the NPO chief, Muhammad Alamgir Chaudhry, here on Tuesday, while addressing a press conference, adding that there is a need for awareness on productivity in Pakistan at all levels, including industry, agriculture, academia, and the general public.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) NPO said that realising sustainable productivity as an important factor for achieving competitiveness and target GDP growth, the Ministry of Industries and Production emphasised to launch a comprehensive productivity movement as successfully done in the other developed countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Malaysia.
The nations that have worked in the recent past have improved their productivity standards at various sectors, including Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, today have economies that are competitive with the outside world and now have the status of emerging economies at the regional and global levels.
The mainstay of the economic development of these countries has been on their productive workforce and in reality these countries are exporting the skills of their productive workforce.
He informed the main stages and objectives of the productivity movement are to create awareness, productivity design and development stage, implementation level and finally continuous improvement.
At present, various sectors of the national economy are suffering from lack of competitiveness and inefficiency due to productivity issues, where “We need to improve in inputs.”
He said that due to productivity issues, Pakistan has lost competitiveness in the global market and now the government is working on a medium- and long-term plan to improve it.
He said that through this awareness campaign, NPO will engage national and international productivity experts, who may help and guide in design and development of activities to be launched during awareness campaigns and identify products and services to be developed during the product design and development stage.
Through this drive at the national level the NPO would also spread productivity promotional material, booklets, documentaries, productivity news and journals.
He said, “We would also go to educational institutions for conducting productivity workshops. The productivity awareness campaign will also start through print, electronic and social media and also celebrating productivity day and week.”
Alamgir Chaudhry said that competitiveness in public and private sectors must be promoted to increase industrial productivity for achieving economic growth and prosperity.
He said, “We need to be efficient in our productivity tools including output increase, human resources, technology and process of different industrial value chains for achieving industrial growth to enhance our trade volume with the world.”
“The local industrial sector is lacking the efficiency in its value chain through technology, productivity, innovation; managerial productivity and human labour productivity, which are the major tools to enhance the productivity and efficiency in the local industrial sector,” he said.
While sharing the cooperation of NPO with different industries, he said that his organisation was fully committed to cooperate with the major sectors of economy including agriculture, textile, leather, sports to enhance the efficiency of the value chains of these sectors for achieving productivity at optimum level.
He said that the main focus of his organisation was to take initiatives and implement programmes that inculcate productivity and quality culture in Pakistan to compete with other regional and global competitors.
The CEO said that the NPO has also launched a “National Master Plan” on the pattern of Singapore, which achieved the optimum level of productivity in the last decade and proved the most efficient public and private sector.
