Secretariat attendance falls below 50 pc
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, May 06 2019: Even though introduction of biometric attendance registration system brought a marked improvement in the attendance and punctuality of Manipur Secretariat employees, the improvement has fizzled out within a very short time.

Now attendance of employees at Manipur Secretariat has spiralled down below 50 per cent.

Taking serious note of the ever declining attendance, the Chief Secretary has instructed the GAD Principal Secretary to take into account employees' biometric attendance while preparing pay bills, informed a source.

Out of 1112 Secretariat employees enrolled for biometric attendance, daily attendance record fluctuates around 450.Taking serious note of this dereliction, Chief Secretary Dr J Suresh Babu today wrote to the GAD Principal Secretary and the IT Commissioner to take the employees' attendance into account while preparing pay bills for the month of May.

Following repeated complaints from the public against the unpunctuality of Government employees in attending their offices, the State Government first targeted the Secretariat which is said that to be the backbone of State administration to remedy the malaise by introducing biometric attendance system in 2017.An office memorandum issued by then Chief Secretary O Nabakishore on May 23, 2017 stated that Aadhar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBES) had been introduced in place of the earlier system of appending signatures on attendance registers.

The office memorandum laid down that the biometric attendance system would encompass Administrative Secretaries of all departments and other officials.

Following his predecessor, Chief Secretary Dr J Suresh Babu initiated several measures to improve employees' attendance.

He categorically instructed all employees to register their names in the biometric attendance system on arrival as well as before leaving office.

Subsequently, office attendance at Manipur Secretariat improved remarkably for some time.

Out of 959 employees enrolled for biometric attendance, 935 attended office in April last year.

This was 97 per cent, said the source.

But today, the attendance rate has declined to a very dismal figure of just around 450 against the total employees of 1112.It remains a big question whether large majority of the employees have been staying away from their offices on the ground that heavy official works related to closure of financial year and the Lok Sabha election are over or whether it is a case of completely disregarding the Government's instructions, added the source.

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