WINDHOEK – Government plans to leapfrog the industrial and mass production stages of economic development in order to achieve Vision 2030 and transform the Namibian economy from an agricultural economy to a knowledge-based economy. “To do that we have to focus all our efforts on improving our human resources. I have mentioned it before but I cannot over emphasise the importance of human resource development”, said Prime Minister, Hage Geingob, yesterday during the official opening of the two-day annual conference and exhibition of the Institute for People Management (IPM) Namibia.
“You are all aware that we are faced with a challenge of income disparities within our economy. Part of this has to do with the quality of our human resources”, noted Geingob. The Prime Minister continued that human resource development is of strategic importance because organisations consist of people and so the development of people should be a key task for organisations. “People matter because in the highly competitive environment which offices, ministries, agencies and private sector firms now face, people have become precious commodities in gaining any sort of advantage over other organisations”, remarked Geingob.
According to Geingob the Namibian government has realised the importance of human resources development, which together with institutional capacity building, has been identified as some of the prerequisite strategic objectives for achieving Vision 2030 and for the implementation of the national development plans (NDPs). Geingob added that within the Public Service of Namibia the State continues to develop intervention strategies to ensure the development of human resources to address the mismatch between economic growth and employment, which has resulted in an “unacceptably high” unemployment rate. “Therefore it is not enough for us to build beautiful offices and formulate excellent policies. This alone will not take our country forward if we don’t invest time, money and effort in developing our human resources so that we are all able to pull in the same direction and managers are able to win the hearts and minds of employees”, said Geingob.
“We have built a strong governance architecture and a robust Macro-Economic Architecture. However, it is now time to work towards developing our socio- economic architecture so that we can achieve more equitable wealth distribution and reduce poverty, while at the same time maintaining a strong rate of economic growth. Future progress will depend on us making full use of our talent. That is why human resource and leadership development is critical to Namibia, and that is why we need to invest heavily in this area”, noted Geingob.
Welcoming delegates at yesterday’s event, IPM president, Tim Ekandjo, confirmed that this year’s conference is the biggest to date in terms of delegate numbers. “The IPM conference will not just be another conference, but we place absolute and uncompromising emphasis on the very best speakers available”, said Ekandjo. The IPM president elaborated that during the last four years IPM Namibia has been instrumental in key people development initiatives, which he said includes the acceleration of cooperative education in the form of work integrated learning, the finalisation of the National Human Resources Plan and most recently the launch and implementation of the National Human Resources Standards Qualification for Namibia. “The fact that IPM Namibia has achieved these milestones with almost no financial resources, it is indeed applaudable”, added Ekandjo.