GUJRAT: Prime Minister Imran Khan has tasked the National Productivity Organisation (NPO) with helping the Wazirabad-based cottage industry of cutlery in reducing production cost by 20 per cent annually.

NPO is a government body working under the federal ministry of industry and production that would provide technical guidance to the ‘city of cutlery’ on the methods of reducing business cost and enhance the productivity.

Chairman Pakistan cutlery and stainless utensils manufacturers association Khalid Mughal told Dawn that a team of NPO being led by its chief executive officer Alamgir Chaudhry had held an interactive session with the local manufacturers in Wazirabad on Friday.

He said the NPO was assigned a task by the prime minister to involve the expert engineers of the organisation for adopting energy conservation and other latest techniques in the production operations of the cutlery sector.

The NPO team briefed the participants about the working of the organisation and emphasised the need for controlling the rising cost of doing business for which the manufacturers would be asked to use certain instruments to minimise the energy consumption.

Moreover, the expert engineers of NPO would also work along the local manufacturers to teach them about enhancing production capacity by using the same available machinery at these manufacturing units.

The members of cutlery association also asked the NPO team to help the manufacturers in establishing new workshops at recently-built Wazirabad small industries estate area where manufacturers are ready to launch new factories in the near future so that the required equipment and machinery might be installed timely.

They also sought the guidance of NPO in capacity building of the cutlery sector to be on a par with the competitors in global market such as China, Taiwan, India and Vietnam etc that would contribute to the national economic growth.

Wazirabad has been a house of at least 1,500-2,000 mostly small and medium scale cutlery manufacturing units but lacks in adopting modern design and technology for which the sector needs government support to be on a par with other competitors in the global markets.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2021