The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah has tasked the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI) to focus on its core mandate of providing training for Ghanaians to increase productivity at workplaces.
MDPI, a subvented agency under the Employment Ministry, is involved in promoting increased productivity in organizations through specific programmes which provide training for participants.
During the official launch of the Institute’s building which took place on Friday, August 28, the sector minister, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, urged the MDPI to step up its game in providing services to Ghanaians to enable the growth of the country.
“I know you have a number of consultants that you work with. They are equal to any other consultants that you may find in any other environment in Ghana. This is the time for them to prove their worth. This is the time for them to see that indeed, Ghana has an institution that is capable of matching any other productivity institute in the world. I am told that this is the only productivity institute in West Africa, if not in the whole of Africa. I want you to stick to your core programs,” he stated.
He said, “Sometimes, because of funding, you are forced to run programmes that will let you deviate from your traditional mandate, but the issue of productivity continues to be at the core of production. So I wouldn’t advise that we quickly move to run degree programmes just to let us have students who can pay and make us earn more money. Ghana knows very well that we need to train our children to have degrees, yet they set you up with a mandate and that mandate is to teach people on issues of productivity. So stick to that mandate and make sure that by your activities, our industries will be able to compete, even if not at the global level, within the West African sub-region.”
On his part, the Director-General of the Institute, Kweku Odame-Takyi, made known to Citi Business News new initiatives they plan to roll out now that they have moved into a new building.
He noted, “We want to prepare people to be able to work from home effectively. We have tried it and seen practical challenges with working from home. We have done a dedicated programme that we are going to launch to help people prepare to work from home. We also want to help the informal sector to have business continuity plans. We are saying this happens every 100 years but something could come and disturb the normal things. So if you have a business continuity plan, you should be able to respond to challenges of this nature.”
He continued: “Already, we are doing something with MPRA. We want to do a research that will encourage people, especially the informal sector to go into pension arrangements and savings. At the end of the day, we all come to work but we go home individually. So your own preparedness is that we want to encourage individuals to be doing.”
About MDPI
The Management Development and Productivity Institute exists to promote increased productivity, in both public and private organizations, to enable them contribute to the growth of the economy on a sustainable basis.
It achieves this through Productivity Improvement Activities, Management Development Programs, Research and Publications and their Dissemination.
Its main objectives are to embark upon practical aspects of training and problem solving with a view to building up managerial capacity and promoting increased productivity; offer Consultancy Services to improve Organizational efficiency and effectiveness; and conduct macro/microeconomic studies, enquiries and research to determine suitable management techniques and practices to improve and develop the standard of management in all aspects.