Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, November 13

The Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system, introduced to improve punctuality in the government offices of the erstwhile state of J&K, has completely collapsed due snapping of mobile Internet during the last three months.

Although offices located within cities have landline phones, officers at the helm of the affairs have ‘intentionally’ not installed broadband with these phones to avoid biometric attendance.

Highly placed sources said after August 5 — the day when mobile Internet was snapped across J&K — the authorities had stopped collecting biometric attendance because most of the departments had introduced the system through mobile Internet because landline telephones were available only in offices located within the city.

“Manual attendance system has been restarted in most of the departments because almost all offices located in the peripheries have stopped sending biometric attendance data at the higher level,” a source said, adding, “Due to non-availability of mobile Internet it is impossible to continue with biometric attendance so the manual system of attendance on register has restarted.”

Following large-scale complaints that over 30 per cent of employees drawing salaries from the government rarely attend their offices due to patronage of officers at the helm of the affairs, the Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system was introduced in the year 2016.

Although the authorities had to face difficulty in introducing the system, within two-year time it gave encouraging result as effective implementation of biometric attendance in government offices had showed tangible results as it improved punctuality and the delivery of service.

The government in 2018 had admitted that the digital attendance in the civil secretariat and other offices witnessed a sudden jump to 80 per cent from 45 per cent since the reinforced inception of the biometric system.

The government had further mentioned that the biometric time and attendance system had also improved workforce productivity, efficiency and human resource management at all levels in the administration.

The aim of introducing the biometric attendance system was to ensure punctuality and discipline in attending offices by government functionaries, irrespective of their levels and proper functioning of all institutions, especially schools, colleges, hospitals and ration shops, among others.

As per official data, there were 4.5 lakh employees in the erstwhile state of J&K, including Ladakh.

Curbs on net came into effect on Aug 5