For two days next week, the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s conference room will be occupied by key players from the corporate sector here.

On Monday and Tuesday, persons from top management, executive officers, business administrators, permanent secretaries, and labour executives, will all knock heads together, in a workshop to formulate plans for the establishment of a national Productivity Council here. {{more}}

The workshop will be spearheaded by PROMALCO, The Programme for the Promotion of Management and Labour Cooperation in the Caribbean.

PROMALCO, a project formulated by the International Labour Organization (ILO), has been assisting Caribbean countries for the last four years in improving competitiveness and productivity to the level of international standards.

According to programme director, Andre-Vincent Henry, the aim of the programme is “to foster a closer relationship with management and workers to increase productivity at the levels of enterprises in developed countries.”

“We are here in St. Vincent, as a result of the championing of productivity enhancement matters by the people of St. Vincent,” Henry said.

The workshop, a continued effort between PROMALCO and local stakeholders, will attract Dr. Joseph Prokopenko, one of the world’s leading researchers on national productivity issues. Dr. Prokopenko, who has served as International Management and Enterprise Consultant, is a Fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Sciences, and is as an Academician of the International Academy of Corporate Management.

Also addressing the workshop will be Dr. Imoniti Christopher Immoslie, Senior Specialist at the sub regional office of the Caribbean Labour Organisation. Both facilitators would discuss issues in the area of improving competitiveness and productivity.

Social and cultural attitudes, management limitations, poor labour management relations, poor communication and a lack of trust were some of the key areas in which the corporate community has fallen short. “We didn’t identify these by ourselves, these were mainly identified by the social partners, representative of government employers and the labour movements here in St. Vincent,” Henry said.

Next week’s workshop will make way for the formation of a National Productivity Council to address these issues in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

National Workers Movement president, Noel Jackson is certain that this is the right time for such a movement in light of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy.

“I think the time has come for us to move the process forward… employers, government and trade unions can use the information to plan, so that SVG can join the rest of the competitive world,” Jackson highlighted.

He said that the government has undertaken the initiative to ensure that National Productivity Council comes on stream. “Based on the labour management relationship currently existing in St. Vincent, this puts us in a very good position to have the National Productivity Council up and running,” Jackson said.

The establishment of the council will put SVG in a position along with Jamaica and Barbados, which have established national productivity centres at the level of larger international countries.