The Madhya Pradesh higher education department has linked e-attendance with disbursement of salaries of principals, teachers and employees of government colleges in the state to stem rampant absenteeism among faculty and staff in the institutes, officials said.
“We have installed biometric machines at all government colleges in Indore division and no one will now escape by making excuses that their college did not have biometric machines so they could not mark their attendance,” said RS Verma, additional director of the higher education department in Indore division.
During a recent video conference with additional directors of the department and university registrars, state principal secretary (higher education) Ashish Upadhayaya said that e-attendance has been made mandatory to all teaching and non-teaching staff of government colleges. Employees who did not mark their attendance on biometric machines will not be able to draw their salary, Upadhayaya told the officials. “They will be marked absent on the days when their attendance was not registered through biometrics machines,” he said. Although the principal secretary has given the order verbally, it will be implemented across the state, said Verma. E-machines have been installed at all government colleges across the state to monitor attendance of employees.
In Indore division, there are 55 government colleges with more than 2,000 permanent employees and faculty. Earlier, when the principal secretary was informed that at times e-machines do not function due to low internet speed, he said excuses will not be tolerated.
The new attendance system will be implemented across 463 government colleges in the state, said MB Ojha, commission higher education department. “The reason behind the move is to provide a faster, easier and more accurate way of recording attendance of teaching and non-teaching staff in higher education institutes,” he said.
‘New system will help get exact data about availability of faculty in colleges’
“Besides, the new system will help get exact data about the availability of faculty in different colleges and also to record the faculty – student ratio as we want to improve results in future.” Explaining how the system works, Verma said that the principal of every college in the state will be responsible to ensure all faculty members mark their attendance through e-attendance.
