Under duress, govt pulls out staff access control system

Thiruvananthapuram: Under pressure from the Secretariat employees’ organizations, the plan to link the access control system with the biometric punching at the government Secretariat has been withdrawn. The government had earlier planned to implement the access control system from April 1 to find out truant employees who bunk offices after attendance punching. The government had also planned to cut the salaries of such employees.
The move was aimed at preventing employees from leaving office during working hours. Earlier, it was proposed to set up the access control system and to link it with salary distribution software SPARK.
However, this came under severe criticism from the unions and CPM’s Kerala Secretariat Employees Association was at the forefront against its implementation. “The proposed measure will amount to making the employees hostages. Since the biometric punching system will be linked to SPARK, the employees will lose their salary even if they leave the office for official purposes,” said K N Ashok Kumar, general secretary of Secretariat employee’s association.
The Congress-led Kerala Secretariat Association has also termed the government’s decision as anti-employees and said the government is acting like corporates.
The government was aiming at implementing the access control system in the 34 departments at the government Secretariat. For this, sensor-based detecting machines were purchased at a cost of Rs 1.97 crore. Now, the access control system will be used only for security purposes and will only be installed at the main entry points.
The office timing is from 10:15am to 5:15pm and the decision was to install the system at all blocks and offices of the Secretariat. This meant that an employee entering the building could go outside only during the lunch break. The unions cited that even those employees who go from one block to another for official purposes will lose their salaries.