E-punching plan for govt employees fails to take off

Thiruvananthapuram: The government decision to implement electronic punching for marking the attendance of employees from January 1 has not materialised in most of the field offices in the state.
In district collectorates, except in Idukki, Palakkad and Ernakulam, there were no sufficient punching machines that could be installed in the offices. In the remaining offices, the machines could not be linked to the Service and Payroll Administrative Repository of Kerala (SPARK), the salary handling system for state government employees.
With this, the government has extended the date for implementation of the system to January 31.
Chief secretary V P Joy had, in a circular issued last month, instructed all the heads of departments to ensure that electronic punching is introduced in all government offices before March 31 this year. As part of this, all the district collectorates and directorates were asked to switch over to the system by January 1.
Even though it was earlier decided to implement the system in 2019 itself, it was delayed due to the Covid pandemic. At present, the punching machine has been linked to SPARK only in a few offices, including the government secretariat in the capital.
It was decided that the progress of the implementation of the system would be reviewed in the monthly conference of the chief secretary with the department secretaries. In every office, the concerned additional secretary or a joint secretary will be in charge of the electronic punching system.