MCG to mark attendance of sanitation staff using contactless biometric system

The sanitation staff currently mark their attendance manually, in registers, and that often, workers send proxies or ask their colleagues to mark their attendance. In some instances, it was observed that workers who have been absent for months continued to be marked present in the registers

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is planning to introduce a contactless biometric attendance system for its sanitation staff to check proxies and curb such illegal practices, officials said on Monday.

Of the 6,600 workers employed by the MCG, more than 3,500 are deputed in its sanitation wing. (HT Archive)

The MCG’s executive engineer, Sunder Sheoran, said that the sanitation staff currently mark their attendance manually, in registers, and that often, workers send proxies or ask their colleagues to mark their attendance. In some instances, it was observed that workers who have been absent for months continued to be marked present in the registers, Sheoran said.

He said that with the digital attendance system, workers will have to be present to mark their attendance. Of the 6,600 workers employed by the MCG, more than 3,500 are deputed in its sanitation wing.

“In the contactless biometric attendance system, sanitation inspectors and senior sanitary inspectors will mark attendance of workers using face scanners on a daily basis. In this regard, the MCG has floated tenders for procuring the contactless biometric attendance system from a private agency, bids for which will open on November 5,” Sheoran said.

Since December 2012, MCG’s sanitation staff were marking their attendance through fingerprint biometric machines. However, the system was discontinued in March 2020 following the Covid-19 outbreak and the process of marking attendance reverted to a register-based system.

However, the absence of government workers from their duties as well as tampering of the attendance system, which was also highlighted by Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar during a rally in Sohna on October 23, has forced the corporation to change the system, officials said.

During the rally in Sohna, Khattar said that the Haryana government was going to introduce a smartwatch for all government employees, which would only work if worn by the designated employee, to track their movements during work for better accountability.

Over the years, the MCG’s attempts to track movements of sanitation workers and mark their attendance biometrically has faced resistance at each turn.

Last year, the MCG introduced smartwatches in a bid to find alternative ways to track and mark the attendance of sanitation workers amid complaints from residents that sanitation workers were not lifting garbage and were absent from their areas.

In December 2020, the MCG distributed around a dozen GPS-enabled smartwatches on a trial basis for tracking the movement of sanitation workers. “The contactless biometric attendance system and smartwatches are designed for two different purposes. While the smartwatches track the movement of a worker, the contactless system is for marking attendance,” said Sheoran.

However, the GPS smartwatch project has remained at the pilot stage so far.

In August, the MCG started another pilot project wherein a multi-purpose health worker (MPHW) had to visit each municipal ward and click a group photo of sanitation workers on duty, area wise, as well as upload photos of the attendance register on a dedicated portal. However, following protests by unions of sanitation workers in September, the project was indefinitely suspended.

Members of the sanitation workers’ union said that they are also against the MCG’s latest venture.

“Sanitation workers are spread out. Their area of work changes on a daily basis. Hence, MCG officials will not be able to keep track and mark attendance properly. Further, MCG’s servers, even when the biometric system was operational, remained erratic due to which workers had to stand in queues for a long duration just for marking their attendance, instead of working,” said Rajesh Kumar, the district president of the Haryana Sanitation Workers Union.

Kumar said that the union would also stage protests if the contactless biometric attendance system is introduced.