Civic agency gives up on biometric roll call

While biometric attendance system for employees is becoming the order of the day at all offices — private or government — the New Delhi Municipal Council has once again given up its plan to introduce the system for its staff.

The NDMC chairperson last year in his budget proposal for the financial year 2012-13 had announced to re-introduce biometric attendance system for employees from April 1, 2012. But sources say the corporation has now decided to shelve the project.

A senior NDMC officer said the decision was taken as they could not find the right software to implement the project.

“The vendor associated with the project through the tendering process could not provide a software with satisfactory results,” the officer said.  

According to the officer, several options were explored as pilot projects, but none gave good results.

NDMC has some 14,000 regular and 4,000 contract employees.
Arguing that the system is successful only at offices with limited employee strength, NDMC officers said they need a software that can read employees’ thumb impressions quickly to avoid queues.

“All employees, from peon to top officials, report to office at the same time. Even now, when biometric attendance is not in place, a long queue can be seen outside lifts on the ground floor during morning hours at the headquarters. This affects work,” an officer said.

However, several other government agencies in the city, including municipal corporations and Delhi government offices having similar employee strength have adopted biometric attendance system.

Also, NDMC’s information technology department had planned to install attendance machines at 100 locations, including on all the floors of NDMC’s headquarters, Palika Kendra. It had also planned to get mobile swiping machines in at least 27 locations where employees can log in and log out.

The introduction of the new-age attendance system was in controversy even in the past. NDMC had first introduced the system in 2009, but was forced to withdraw it due to opposition from the staff.