The single most important purpose of the local economy is to engage in productive activity using the resources of the entire nation (capital, labour and physical resources) in order to provide the sustenance (of infrastructure, goods and services) that is needed by the nation. Much is being said about monetary and fiscal policy in mending and strengthening the economy, there is even talk of improving the utilisation of Cepep workers (the current whipping boys for low productivity and idleness).
However, the larger question to me is what is to be done to improve the overall productivity of the nation, all sectors included (private, public and voluntary) and all industries alike?
Without this improvement, all the foreign exchange policy and wage freeze and interest rate hike will come to nought. Without value –for-money output improving, everything results to wastage and a haemorrhaging of this country’s wealth, over the medium to long term.
High oil and gas revenues were the things subsidising our low productivity behaviours, now under current circumstance we are hard-pressed to discontinue down this road.
We first need a national consultation among the sectors (a tripartite committee) to devise a suitable and effective performance assessment and management process/method that can be varied for use as a national template for the various productive sectors. This, together with an appropriate incentive and reward policy, will set the general standards for any kind of employment and compensation in T&T.
Once output can be measured performance can be assessed, there is no mistaking this and every output can be measured in some form or fashion. Let us as a nation get serious and tackle the root causes of our lack lustre performances and stop treating symptoms when we all know what the real illness is.
Before implementing this process in Government though, there needs to be a human resource data base that can profile every government/employee and store their performance standards for measurement with their assessment details at the end of each employment cycle or year. Using payroll database records is the fastest way to identify and verify workers and hopefully eliminate ghosts in the process.
In this vein, all ministries should be exhorted not to cut their IT development and usage budgets under their seven per cent cut mandate because IT is critical to getting us more productive. To cut this expenditure would be a grave mistake and a retro step for development. On the contrary speeding up automation would be one way to achieve cost savings and in essence reducing budgeted expenditure.
John Thompson,
St James