Every business or innovation strives to make profits for sustainability as well as growth. However, the reality on the ground is that not every business can make profits let alone sustain itself. Realizing the various challenges TEVET-compliant companies, as well as TEVET graduates’ enterprises, were facing, the TEVET Authority re-engineered the Private-Public Sector Training Programme (PPSTP) to Productivity Enhancement Programme (PEP) with a focus on improving their productivity and quality of goods and services. 

One of the beneficiaries of the PEP interventions is Fleet Tech services. A company that deals with car servicing, selling tyres, batteries, alarms, tracking systems, and vehicle recovery services.

Fllet Tech, GPS and IT manager Titani Njombwa shared how PEP interventions have helped to reshape their thinking and improve service delivery to their customers.  According to Njombwa, Fleet Tech now embraces timely service delivery as PEP has helped them to have the right tools all the time.

“We are now able to deliver to the satisfaction of our clients both time and quality-wise. Team working spirit has also generally improved among workers such that when one is absent, a gap is not felt since they cover for each other. In short, I can say, our workers now have a sense of responsibility towards customer satisfaction due to the intervention we underwent with PEP” shared Njombwa.

Njombwa further shared the trickledown effect these improvements have had on their income as well as customer base. “We accommodate every customer specially, and we make sure our customers are satisfied. We always have a smart and clean working environment. We recommend production companies to adopt PEP because there are more benefits to it, especially for setting up working standards, implementation, practice and resulting to the growth of the company” shared Njombwa

TEVET Authority Senior PEP Specialist, Felix Chalamanda, said PEP is a continuous programme and has worked with several stakeholders from all the Regions of Malawi. Fleet Tech Services Ltd came into the TEVET Authority radar through an Entrepreneurship Awards Competition that was held some seven years ago in Malawi and organized by the TEVET Authority. A number of SME entrepreneurs participated but at the end of the said Competition Fleet Tech Services Ltd ended up being one of the best recipients. TEVET Authority being one of the champions in the promotion of SMEs in Malawi engaged Fleet Tech Services Ltd to undergo the PEP interventions to help them from SME to medium or even large enterprises. 

“It should be stated at the onset that this was the period when TEVET Authority had just re-engineered its PPSTP where concentration was only on training as a game changer to PEP where the pivotal belief is training is not the only game changer towards attaining efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately registering positive profitability and productivity at the workplace. Let me encourage companies or enterprises that PEP at the workplace is the way to go and all they must do to benefit from it is to simply express their interest by approaching the TEVET Authority through any of its offices” said Chalamanda.