NEW DELHI, February 12: Improving ports and roads needs to be on top of the national agenda, otherwise country's exports can never compete in the global market place, lieutenant governor of Delhi Tejendra Khanna said in his inaugural address at the 38th workshop meeting of National Productivity Organisations (NPOs) from the Asia-Pacific region.NPOs in the region work towards improving productivity in their respective countries. All the NPOs are under the umbrella of the Asian Productivity Council.
Infrastructure is critical because the countries on the globe are not competing on cost alone. They are competing on time as well. Without proper infrastructure exports cannot reach their destinations on time, Khanna underscored.
Equally important is improving the quality of human resources as that is the core issue foundation of the productivity issue.
Human resources have to be trained but before that the challenge lies of making vast numbers of people literate, Khanna said.
Health care needs to beimproved to boost the quality of human resources. Even though life expectancy has improved, loss of man-days on account of illnesses continues to plague the third world, this involves vast resources, he said.
The environment cannot be ignored as it has been systematically done for many years now. For the last 25 years one has been talking of "sustainable environment." Little has been done on this score and if we continue to ignore the environment any more we are doomed, he said.
Governments have to provide good governance otherwise progress will be slow. Government servants have not been given their positions to trade in their positions they must have a pro-active attitude for helping industry, Khanna said.
Also speaking at the inauguaral session, secretary of industrial development and chairman of the National Productivity Council PG Mankad said increasing productivity in a rapidly changing global scenario where national borders are dissolving under trade pacts, technology is changing fast and the flowof information and people is causing a great flux increasing productivity is a giant task. The four major thrust areas before the NPOs are information technology, green productivity and quality management.
Information technology will make it possible to exchange huge volumes of information and data among firms at a higher speed within and beyond national boundaries, Mankad said.
While pushing the engine of productivity the environment cannot be abused, this is a complex task which poses a big challenge for managers, Mankad emphasised. Secretary general of the Asian productivity Organisation K Yanagi said the role of the ISO 9000 and 14,000 standards in improving productivity is enormous. The APO programme needs to be focused on setting up clearer linkages between productivity increases and improvements in quality and the environment.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
