Story: Rebecca Quaicoe Duho
THE President of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Mr Charles Cofie, has said Ghana can only achieve a high productive capacity to meet international productivity indicators if it has the right management and worker attitudes.
He said there was no gainsaying that Ghana needed a productive movement, led by the government, in close collaboration with employers and organised labour, to champion national productivity.
Mr Cofie, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of UnilEver Ghana Limited, said this when he presented a lecture at the 2008 (11th) Public Services Commission Annual Lecture in Accra on Wednesday.
The lecture was on the theme, “Productivity, performance and pay policies and practices in Ghana”, and brought together workers from both the public and private sectors.
According to Mr Cofie, higher productivity led to higher wages as workers proved themselves capable of performing more sophisticated and higher value-added jobs.
He said in Ghana, productivity improvement had been an issue at the national, sectoral and enterprise levels in both the public and private sectors which, according to him, were beset with problems such as the lack of a productivity framework and its resultant indices to form the bases for determining compensation and remuneration packages for workers.
Those challenges, according to him, had resulted in workers’ wages and salaries being determined by factors that were exogenous to productivity — such as increases in fuel prices and utility tariffs which affected productivity levels in the country.
On the acceleration of productivity and regional integration, Mr Cofie said, “When we look at Ghana’s economic performance over the last years, coupled with the recent discovery of oil, we are tempted to conclude that Ghana is ready to lead African states towards economic emancipation.”
He, however, said “Ghana’s productivity drive cannot advance in isolation, as the economic emancipation of Africa is inexorably linked to successful regional economic integration”, adding that looking at the competition on the international market and the issue of globalisation, the extent of interdependence and linkages among national economies was becoming more significant. He, therefore, called for urgent and successful regional integration through the strengthening of ECOWAS as nations pushed for greater appreciation of the need for higher levels of national productivity.
In order to raise national consciousness of productivity, Mr Cofie called for the relaunch of the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI), a body which exists to promote increased productivity in both public and private organisations in the country, to be given a fresh mandate to contribute to the growth of the economy on a sustainable basis.
The Deputy Director of the National Productivity Centre of the MDPI, Dr Martin Yao Zane, who delivered a lecture on the theme, said if countries got the basics, such as good governments, good workers and strong industries, right, they would remain competitive and their exports would keep growing, with foreign investments coming in.
For the business sector, he said if it was doing the right things, its products and services would be sold and that, according to him, would help the sector keep its costs down, with an overall resultant growth in profit.
The Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Prof George Gyan-Baffour, in an address, said the government was in the process of adopting a progressive income policy which would play a vital role in the overall ongoing public sector reforms.
He said the need for an equitable income policy led to the government setting up the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission aimed at developing and overseeing the implementation of a single spine pay policy that would be proactive and motivate the public sector to achieve greater productivity.
Prof Gyan-Baffour said the government recognised that part of the problems associated with the poor performance of the public services were low levels of compensation and the lack of an appropriate incentive regime.
The Resident Director of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, one of the major sponsors of the annual lectures, Ms Kathrin Meissner, in an address, said the determination of the quantum of remuneration in the public sector was very important for the building of a professional and well-motivated public service.
She said her outfit was interested in leading a dispassionate discussion on topics that would lead to the country’s development.
The Chairman of the Fair Wages Commission, the Most Rev Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, who chaired the lecture, said the problem in the country with regard to productivity was attitudinal, noting that if workers did not change their attitude towards work, the country could not progress.
He said if people did not take their work seriously, it was going to affect productivity in the country.
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