PUNE: About 150 of the 305 municipal schools in the city now have the biometric attendance system. The system will be a part of every primary school run by the Pune Municipal Corporation by the end of January next year, covering about 4,000 teaching and non-teaching staff.

"The municipal corporation is spending Rs 1.30 crore on this project which comes to around Rs 43,000 per school," said Ravi Chaudhari , chairman of municipal education board , while speaking to TOI on Monday.

The work to install the system in civic schools started a week ago and so far 150 civic schools have the system in place.

The school board conducted a demonstration session for the school authorities at V B Gogate school on December 14 explaining the operation of the biometric attendance system software.

"Our aim is to increase the attendance of the staff and maintain a record which will be linked to the payment management server," said Chaudhari. The linking of this system to the payment management server is set to introduce transparency in the attendance marking and will provide incentive to teachers, supervisors and watchmen to be regular in their duties, he said.

"The attendance will be marked on the basis of the fingerprints and will be cross checked at the end of the school timings which will help in keeping the staff in schools throughout the day. It will also reduce a lot of labour work required in maintaining registers and will be user-friendly," he added.

