Mamata government looks to biometric workforce management systems to control absentee employees

The Mamata Banerjee government in India has decided to introduce hidden cameras and fingerprint scanners to monitor the attendance of employees in government offices, according to a report by the Times of India.

The pilot project will be launched in February 2013 at the West Bengal Essential Commodities Supplies Corporation, and will be monitored by Food Minister Jyotipriya Mullick.

This system is being deployed as a form of workforce management as government employees have developed elaborate ways to cover up tardiness or absenteeism, including leaving glasses or other items on their desks to make it look like they’re still at work.

Prior to this system, departmental secretaries did spontaneous checks to ensure employees showed up before 10:30 am, but according to the Times of India report, this system was error-prone and cumbersome at best.

“The CCTVs and the fingerprint readers would make the system foolproof,” Mullick said.

According to M2SYS, “the benefits of biometric employee identification are becoming more widely recognizable in the workforce management community. Recent studies have shown that the integration of a biometric solution into employee time clock terminals and software can help an organization to save up to 7 percent of gross payroll annually by utilizing secure fingerprint recognition technology to eliminate buddy-punching.”

As previously reported in BiometricUpdate.com, governments elsewhere in the world have had issues with tardy employees. For example, Ghana’s Minister of Employment and Social Welfare Moses Asaga said biometric attendance records will soon become mandatory for all ministries and government facilities.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  fingerprint  |  fingerprint scanner  |  government  |  government purchasing  |  identity verification  |  workforce management