The New Nation - Internet Edition

ECONOMIC progress in today's world is not only having a huge number of willing workers although this can be an advantage in lowering wage rates. Only having an abundance of workers does not guarantee competitiveness, specially in the vital export-oriented industries. Bangladeshi entrepreneurs will also need to increase the key 'productivity' of their workers to survive and retain market shares in fierce international competition.

Greater quality output from trained workers translate into more competitiveness. The significance of this crucial factor must be adequately realised by our entrepreneurs, specially in the readymade garment (RMG) which is the country's biggest foreign currency earner. It has been found out that workers in India and China in some cases produce more in less time and produce better quality apparels compared to their counterparts in Bangladesh. Thus, the owners of such industries in those countries have become more competitive. The owners and operators of industries in these countries took pains to improve the productivity of their workers.

Bangladeshi entrepreneurs in general are lagging behind in both understanding the productivity issues and training up their workers adequately to these ends. It is not that all industries have been oblivious of this need. Some enterprises are taking care to increase workers' productivity. But it is imperative for such practices to spread to all industries.

Workers in different sectors should be taken into confidence and told how their higher productivity and efficiency in all respects are the prerequisites to meeting their demands for higher wages and benefits. They should then be brought to a participatory framework in which management would attempt to systematically improve their productivity and efficiency linking any rise in income for the workers to attaining of the productivity goals. The Government, on its part, ought to facilitate the training of workers either free or at nominal costs.