Y.S. RANA, CHANDIGARH—Age-old manual system of attendance in all government offices in Haryana will be a thing of the past as the government of Haryana has decided to introduce biometric attendance in all its offices. It’s a public perception of employees’ availability or the number of hours in office didn’t change. But all this may change soon, as the new BJP government in Haryana, taking a cue from the centre, has decided to introduce the Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system in the state from May 2.
Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal will launch the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric attendance system at Panchkula on May 2 next. With launch of the system the entire government employees comes under the punctuality regime.
While giving this information here on Tuesday, an official spokesman said that the common biometric attendance system would be started for all employees, from peon to chief secretary, in the state civil secretariat at Chandigarh, mini secretariats at Chandigarh and all district headquarters and head offices of a dozen-odd government departments located in Panchkula to begin with. They will be expected to clock in on time, stay in office and then record their exit time while leaving.
He further said that with this system in place, attendance detail of all government employees would be available on the website which could be monitored by officers of department and concerned ministers through an internet enabled computer.
The official further said that this system would ensure punctuality and work culture in government departments. It would also put a check on the practice of proxy attendance. It is an open secret that one may not find employee physically present in the offices.
The system would track whether employees are showing up for work on time. What’s more, not only heads watch them as it verifies officialdom identity and records his/her time-in and time-out with all required details.
Offices of public utility like hospitals, schools, tehsil, driving license or RC would be largely benefited from this system as people usually complained about the non availability of staff in such offices. But now they would have to remain present in their officers as monitoring of presence of any employee or officers could be done from anywhere.
This would also do away the perception of the common man about the non performing attitude of the government employees, he added. He said that figures of last six months revealed that ever since this system has been implemented in the offices of the Central Government, an average employee is working 20 minutes extra everyday and their average working hours is also becoming 8.5 hours per day.
This system is a step towards realizing the commitment of the Government to ensure good governance in the State, he further added. The biometric attendance device will cost the government approximately Rs 9,000. The Chandigarh Administration has already taken a decision to install 350 biometric attendance devices worth Rs 28 lakh in all its offices and schools by the end of this month.
Earlier, such move by the Haryana government was thwarted by the staff of education department broke the biometric devices in a bid to undo the move as it has created chaos at the entry of the civil secretariat.