Chief Executive Officer of the National Productivity Organization Khawaja Muhammad Yousuf in an interview with Pakistan Today said that the government will be officially recognizing the contribution of the private sector by holding the first Prime Minister Quality Award within next few weeks. Prime Minister is the patron of the award and its basic objective is to acknowledge and appreciate the good practices of high achievers at national level.
PT: What are NPO achievements during the last two years under your reign?
KMY: Ever since I became Chief Executive of NPO, my first and foremost objective was to make utmost personal efforts for the success of the organization that is focused on increasing the productivity of all the major economic sectors. NPO as you know has small budget and provides training and consultancy to the businesses. It was formed in 1961 under the aegis of the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) of which Pakistan was a founding member. APO has 20 members and they share with each other their experiences, but China the most successful country of the continent is not the member of the organization. So many valuable experiences which our businesses could have from China were not available. So we decided to obtain membership of World Network of Productivity Organizations (WNPO) which has 52 member countries. Now we have a pool of experters from 72 countries and we can take benefit from their expertise and experiences to enhance productivity. If we need we can consult experts from these 72 countries and train our trainers and get any of other resource person or consultant needed. Getting membership of WNPO is significant as it has increased our ability to further train the local businesses. We also plan to expand our operations, previously we had office only in Islamabad but now we have opened offices in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Multan, Faisalabad, while one each in Mirpur and Quetta is in process. We are focused on enhancing productivity with quality to compete internationally.
PT: How much new manpower you have acquired for
these offices?
KMY: We have limited funds so we could not hire more than the required skeleton staff. Instead of hiring, we have innovated by starting a national register for trainers and consultants. They have been included in our pool and their services are utilized on project to project basis. Now we have a central database of resource persons which could be utilized by any sector. Interestingly now we are approached by the corporate sector to train their human resource. Just to give one example Haier has approached us to train their work force of over 3600 people working in the Air Conditioners, Refrigerators and Television manufacturing units. I think now our efforts are paying off as business leaders recognizing us for productivity enhancement and approaching us for solutions. Every year were help 80 people to get training from abroad in various fields duration of which varies from a few days upto couple of months. While we also invite 20 to 25 experts from aboard every year to train our local people. During the last two years we have held three international conferences and it was a big achievement considering the negative impression about the country’s law and order situation. We successfully projected a soft image of Pakistan.
PT: Is NPO working on some energy related solution as it mainly affects our productivity?
KMY: Yes energy is a big issue when we talk of productivity but there are two issues of the energy crisis. We are not mandated with the energy generation on which I cannot comment but we are working on energy efficiency in the textile and steel sector. During the last two years we have conducted energy audit of 80 textile mills and if they invest in what we propose they have at least 10 to 20 percent saving in their utility bills. An average textile mill having 25,000 spindles gets a saving of average Rs 1 million per month by adopting energy efficiency measures. This initiate of NPO has also received a lot of reorganization from business community and now they are approaching us for energy audit and willing even to pay. Just to give one example one of Pakistan’s largest tent manufacturers was so impressed by our energy audit that they asked us to audit their other units as well. Now we have 38 applications for energy audit even tough initially we did it for free. Industry people are usually averse to get involved with government entity in micro assessing any of their working but in energy audit case we are welcomed whole heartedly which I think is the best example of our success.
PT: Are you are also looking
at the wastage in the
public sector?
KMY: Yes we are also working with the public sector organizations. We are doing energy audit of eight key buildings in the federal capital including the Pakistan Secretariat and PM Secretariat and it will result in 35 percent energy savings in the government offices. But we are mainly focused on the private sector which is the key to enhance productivity and transmit its benefits to the people. We are working on a project to benchmark the cutlery and surgical sector, including fans with the financial assistance of the European Union. Both these are small industries but their potential is huge. We have asked CBI of Netherlands to train our people that will increase their livelihood. We are also working on a common facility centre for the fan sector to improve their quality to retain their export markets.
PT: Why is the quality not recognized in the
government circles?
KMY: Yes you are right as we have export trophy awards arranged by the chambers but no recognition for any business process invention at the official level. But let me inform you that for the first time in the history of Pakistan, the government will be recognizing the efforts of the business community by giving Prime Minister Quality Award (PMQA).The management and administration of the prestigious award is developed on the basis of the world recognized business excellence principles found in US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and other similar awards. Today, more than 70 countries in the world and 17 countries in Asia have adopted the criteria for performance excellence. The intent of the PMQA is to promote awareness of productivity and its impact on competitiveness, understanding of the requirements for excellence in quality and sharing of information on successful strategies and on benefits derived. Prime Minister is the patron of the award and its basic objective is to acknowledge and appreciate the good practices of high achievers at national level. We have hired a consultant from Thailand for the awards as the country regularly holds Thailand Quality Awards. We are also being assisted by Singapore. The awards distribution ceremony was early planned to be held on March 23 but now is rescheduled to be held in April or May.
PT: Are you focusing on any sector to enhance productivity?
KMY: We are not industry specific organization but recently I have asked the organization to focus on agriculture sector, which despite being our mainstay, has very few value added products for exports. We have come up with two projects in the agriculture sector. One of them, extraction of essential oils from fresh flowers, has immense potential. We don’t extract essential oils from our most prized flowers which have a huge demand internationally. What we found out during the project formulation that the essential oils industry has failed to take off in the country just because of lack of extraction technology which is easily available. We estimate is only Rs 2 million are required to setting up an extraction plant that could easily utilize produce of 100 acres of land. If this takes off in the country, the main gainers will be the farmers who will be earning something around Rs 1 million per acre. We have proposed to the government to allow us to set up 4 demo projects in the provinces with three year time frame during which we will be training the farmers from seed, cultivation, extraction and marketing. It will be a revolutionary step in the life of small farmers.