Accra, May 21, GNA - Mr. Charles Cofie, President of the Ghana Employers Association, on Wednesday called for the establishment of a tripartite committee made up of representatives of government, employers and labour to drive a national productivity improvement agenda. Delivering this year Public Services annual lecture series, Mr Cofie said the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI) needed to be restructured and supported to enable it to play a lead role in the crusade on productivity movement. He said there was the urgent need for productivity improvement if the country was to meet the demands of the competitive global environment.

The 11th annual lecture is on the broad theme: "Ghana in Search of a National Incomes Policy". However, the topic for discussion was: Productivity, Performance and Pay-Policy and Practices in Ghana." The annual lecture was instituted in 1998 to create a public services platform where topical and strategic issues bearing on national development generally and on the public services in particular could be freely discussed and debated. Mr Cofie said, to demonstrate commitment it was important that government played a lead role and said, it was time to end the rhetoric and do the work.

As a first step, he said, there was the need to set sectoral productivity indicators to ensure proper measurement, while programmes are instituted for skills training, upgrading and transformation of the labour force to take up new jobs and challenges. Mr. Cofie said the lack of a productivity framework and a technical inefficient labour had led to a situation where salaries were fixed without recourse to [productivity. This situation accounts for the low earnings and explained why the Employers Association had been consistently calling for the payment of a living wage which is linked to productivity, he said. Mr. Cofie said leaders and managers must identify productivity and institute a standard for measuring it. Dr. Martin Zame, Deputy Director Productivity Centre (MDPI), said top management within the public services must show commitment to development of the productivity culture. There must also be the demonstration at the national and individual level.