Productivity is an acquired culture, seminar told

Productivity is an acquired culture, seminar told

JAKARTA (JP): Productivity, one of today's most popular
catchphrases in government and business circles, turns out to be
an acquired culture that can only evolve in society over time.

Rahadi Ramelan, deputy chairman of the National Development
Planning Board (Bappenas), told a seminar yesterday that
productivity enhancement and sustainable economic growth are part
of the evolution of the national culture.

"Productivity improvement is a cultural matter. If we want to
enhance national productivity, then cultural values such as
working ethos, national discipline, performance, professionalism
and devotion have to be sown and developed among the people,
especially the work force," Rahadi said in the seminar jointly
organized by the Ministry of Manpower and the Pan Asia Research
and Communication Services.

"Technology is only an attribution to the cultural values," he
said in the seminar opened by Minister of Industry Tunky
Ariwibowo and attended by experts from Indonesia, Singapore and
the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Any person will attempt to improve his productivity if he has
the outlook that anything he does today must always be done
better than it was yesterday, Rahadi said.

He suggested that productivity enhancement should be well
embedded in the corporate culture of any company.

Tunky, in his keynote address, pointed out that the main
source of economic growth in Indonesia will now come chiefly from
enhancement in workers' productivity and he suggested that the
nation must be prepared to shift its manpower resources from
unproductive to productive sectors.

Recalling that the productivity of Indonesian workers is still
among the lowest in Southeast Asia, Tunky said that the
government has made it a national program to enhance productivity
in its economic development program.

Rahadi, in his presentation, hammered on the same point,
saying that Indonesia no longer could fall back on its natural
resources as it has in the past as the chief source of economic
growth because they are limited.

Besides the capital accumulation and growth of work force,
improvement in the quality of human resources would give a major
contribution to economic growth in the future.

He said the government was making efforts to improve the
quality of human resources, create as many job opportunities as
possible and gear the economic development towards improving
workers' productivity and national productivity.

"Training programs will be launched to improve workers' skill
and the education system has been revamped to allow students at
high school level some exposure to industrial jobs," he said,
adding that these would improve the Indonesian human resources'
competitiveness and the quality of its products.

Bappenas estimates that the average workers' productivity will
increase by 3.3 percent annually in the next five years.
Productivity in the industrial sector is projected to increase by
3.7 percent while that in agriculture by 2.4 percent.

"To reach this target, a total investment of around Rp 660
trillion (US$305 billion) is needed and 10 percent of it is
expected to come from the public," Rahadi said. (rms)