Attendance and availability of employees in government offices has for long been a topic of discussion. The introduction of biometric attendance was deemed to be the answer to part of the problem. However, with employees found missing during working hours, the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) has introduced a movement registry to ensure that employees are present in office.
Munish Moudgil, Secretary, DPAR, sent out an official memo earlier this week instructing officials of the department to start entering details of when and why they have to step out of office during working hours. The memo mentions that the officer found employees missing in the afternoon when he visited a section.
Mr. Moudgil told The Hindu that it has become common for employees to come and leave as and when they please. “When biometric was not there, we found people coming in at 12.30 p.m. and leaving at 4 p.m. Biometric was reintroduced on November 17,” he said.
Biometric attendance was suspended in March in the backdrop of the COVID-19 outbreak as a safety measure.
The movement registry was necessitated when even biometrics failed to ensure that employees stayed in office. “Employees would be putting the biometric in the morning and evening, but in between vanishing from their seats. When we checked, they would say they had gone to so-and-so location. We wanted a record on that,” he explained.
Employees will now have to make an entry in the registry as to when and why they are going out. The administrative department concerned will be given flexibility on the finer details, but this is the broader procedure to be followed, Mr. Moudgil said.
Asked if is this would be applicable to all government departments, he said, “I have issued this for the Secretariat. But ideally, in letter and spirit others should also follow. For example, I can’t issue these directions for another department. But the spirit of this can be followed by everybody and the letter can be suitably issued by the departments concerned.”
L. Byrappa, president of the Retired State Government Employees’ Association, said the movement registry existed before as well, but was not used once biometric attendance kicked in. “How it is implemented depends on the higher officers. If they are in office and keep a watch, employees will fall in line. It is a good move and not restrictive,” he said.