Centre asks all departments to ensure employees mark attendance through Aadhaar-enabled biometric system

The Centre on Friday asked all its departments to ensure that employees working under them mandatorily mark their attendance through an Aadhaar-enabled biometric system.

The move came after it noticed laxity on the part of government departments and the employees who are not marking attendance despite being registered on the system.

During a recent review of the implementation of the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS), it has been observed that a large number of government employees posted across ministries/departments/organisations of the Government of India (GOI), are not marking their attendance using the system, an order issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

Taking a serious note of the inattentiveness/laxity on the part of ministries/departments/organisations and the employees (who are not marking attendance despite being registered and active), it has been decided that "ministries/ departments/organisations (MDOs) shall ensure that the employees posted there to mark their attendance using AEBAS without fail", it said.

All ministries and departments have been asked to ensure that the biometric machines remain functional at all times; and heads of departments (HODs) shall periodically monitor the marking of attendance to ensure punctuality and sensitise their employees to adhere to the instructions relating to office hours, late attendance etc., said the order issued to all central government ministries.

"Habitual late attendance and early leaving of office should be viewed seriously and essentially discouraged and action against the same may be initiated under the extant GOI rules," it added.

In respect of divyang employees, MDOs will make appropriate arrangements for providing easily accessible machines at lower heights or at their desks and for capturing biometrics through face recognition machines, the order said.

Marking of attendance over AEBAS had remained suspended for a large period, during the spread of Covid-19.

The Personnel Ministry, through its order dated January 31, 2022, had instructed that biometric attendance shall remain suspended till February 15, 2022, or till further orders, and consequently, marking of attendance through AEBAS automatically resumed since February 16, 2022.

"However, it has been observed that many MDOs have not yet resumed the use of AEBAS for marking the attendance of their employees," the order said.