Noida: Sanitation workers of the Noida Authority on Monday registered their protest against the decision to make them wear GPS-enabled digital watches on duty. They said that the trackers would infringe on their privacy and it should not be forced on anyone. The authority had on Friday started distributing digital watches among its field workers and around 1,000 devices were given out in the first phase. Those who got the digital watches were from various departments such as health, horticulture and water works.
Rajkumar Singh, president of the Noida Authority employees union, said, “There are multiple court rulings that bar government agencies from forcing GPS tracking devices on their employees without their consent. But the authority officials have threatened supervisors with wrong entries and forced them to wear the watches. Senior officials should lead by example and wear the watches themselves and making their location public during duty hours. We have asked the chief executive officer to withdraw this else we will resort to protest.”
In their representation to the CEO, the employees have cited court judgements that discourage workplace surveillance without prior approval and consent of the employees.
“Due to staff crunch, several workers are assigned multiple duties in the day. In such a scenario, it is possible that we are marked absent from one place of work. Who will listen to us when our salary gets deducted. It is better that we mark our presence in the register and it is entered in the system later,” said a contractual employee deputed to clean the Kanchanjunga market.
Another employee said that since the fleet of vehicles deployed for road cleaning, garbage lifting and other municipal functions is already fitted with GPS trackers, there is no need for another layer of surveillance.
Meanwhile, SC Mishra, senior project engineer of the health department, said that talks and meeting will be held with employees. “We gave the watches to the workers who were willing to wear them. It is not forced on anyone,” he said.