Come May, muster attendance in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will be a thing of the past. The civic body will make Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBS) mandatory for its 1.07 lakh employees. Of the 1.07 lakh, around 1 lakh have already been registered while the rest will be registered by the end of April.
In 2016, the central government had issued a circular asking all the government organisations across the country to register its employees on AEBS, following which, the BMC started registering its employees with the system.
The process of registration started in January 2017. "The registration is done by using the Aadhaar number and thus, the process has become easy as all details are already available on the card," said a senior civic official.
Employees can punch in using their last eight digits of their Aadhaar, and finger impression. From the first week of May, latecomers will face salary cuts.
"Even a five-minute delay in attendance will be recorded in the system and the employee's salary will be cut," said the official. However, the head of departments can fix entry and exit time of their staff depending on the nature of work and requirement. Since the whole process of attendance will bring transparency in the functioning of the civic body, a section of employees are against it. The assistant municipal commissioner of B-ward confirmed that a section of staff — garbage management staff in B-ward — had gone on flash strike on Tuesday.
Milind Ranade, General Secretary of Kachra Vahtuk Shramik Sangh said, "We are not opposing the biometric attendance system. But there are flaws in the system which need to be addressed," adding that they have already submitted a letter with the civic body with their demands.
Sudhir Naik, Deputy Municipal Commissioner said, "We have decided to make biometric attendance mandatory for all employees from the first week of May," adding that employees can punch in from any biometric system of the BMC.
AGAINST THE CLOCK
- The trial AEBS currently underway shows the average entry and exit time is 9.52 am and 5.18 pm.
- Employees who are on-field can apply for outdoor (OD) attendance through the MCGM HR App.
- The HoD will receive an SMS soon after an employee applies for Outdoor Duty through the app.
- The HoD can then accept or reject the request made by the employee.
