Mumbai: Hospitals to install a face verification system to curb the spread of COVID-19

Mumbai: To curb the spread of COVID-19 contagion, a face verification system will now be deployed at hospitals instead of the usual biometric attendance. 

This experiment will begin from Nair hospital, thereby, putting the controversy over making biometric attendance compulsory for municipal hospitals’ employees, at rest.

Biometric attendance which began from 6th of July was cancelled after the employees of the corporation raised a protest regarding the same. However, the employees at the municipal hospitals were excluded from this. Due to this, the trade unions had warned of agitation from Monday onwards. Meanwhile, Mayor Kishori Pendekar recently visited Lokamanya Tilak Municipal Hospital in Sion, Mumbai.

This time, she visited the COVID-19 ward and inspected the conditions. However, after she noticed that some members from the class IV staff were absent, she reviewed the attendance and service facilities of the staff. A meeting was called on Friday in the penguin room of Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Park in Byculla. 

The meeting was attended by Health Committee Chairman Ameya Ghole, Additional Commissioner (Projects) P. Velarasu was accompanied by the medical superintendent of the major hospital and concerned officials. 

In this meeting, the dean and the medical superintendent expressed the view that the Municipal hospitals should have a biometric system in one form or another. 

A face recognition system was introduced to record the attendance of employees. The mayor directed that the system should be installed at Nair hospital on experimental basis after inspection by expert bodies.

Edited by:
Khevna Pandit