The Centre has warned of strict action against its employees for tardiness and said that habitual late attendance and early leaving from office should be viewed seriously by the authorities concerned. The move comes after it noticed that several employees were not registering their attendance in an Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) and "some of the employees have been coming late on a regular basis".
All central government departments have been asked to ensure that employees mark their attendance using AEBAS without fail. In case any employee is not registered over AEBAS, immediate steps should be taken to register his/her biometric data on the portal, it said. "In respect of Divyaang employees, MDOs will make appropriate arrangements for providing convenient and easily accessible machines for capturing biometrics through suitable alternative modes," reads the order dated June 15.
In an order, the Personnel Ministry suggested the use of a mobile phone-based face authentication system that provides "live location detection and geo-tagging" among others as well.
"Habitual late attendance and early leaving of office should be viewed seriously and be essentially discouraged," according to the order. All HODs of the MDOs have been asked to sensitise their employees to adhere to the instructions relating to office hours, late attendance, etc. "They would download the consolidated report from the portal (www.Attendance.Gov.In) on a regular basis and identify the defaulters," the order said. Early leaving is also to be treated in the same manner as late coming, the order said.
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Citing existing rules, the Personnel Ministry said "half-a-day's Casual Leave (CL) should be debited for each day of late attendance, but late attendance up to an hour, on not more than two occasions in a month, and for justifiable reasons may be condoned by the competent authority".
In addition to debiting Casual Leave (or Earned Leave, when no CL is available), disciplinary action may also be initiated against government servants coming to office habitually late as it amounts to 'misconduct' under the conduct rules, it said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from PTI)
