Beware: Faulty Biometric Machines killing MBBS Faculty Attendance

Jaipur: Faulty Biometric Attendance Machine installations in various medical colleges of the country have ended up making light of a very serious intention set forth by the Medical Council of India (MCI), that of keeping a check on doctors playing truant with government duty hours and attending to private practices instead.

Though hospital authorities all across the country have directed faculty members to mark their presence in colleges through Biometric machines, however, the functional abnormalities of the attendance machines have made this near impossible.

The Sawai Man Singh College’s faculty strength of 935, registered with the OFAMOS (Online Faculty Attendance Monitoring System) of the college and its affiliated hospitals found a mere 200 succeed in marking their attendance on the machines through the OFAMOS, on Tuesday.

The college in the face of this technical fiasco has already alerted the Council.

"We have written to MCI that there are biometric machines which have been installed but they are not working. Besides, we have also requested MCI to install more machines as the existing machines are not sufficient for SMS medical college," said Dr. US Agarwal, principal, and controller, SMS Medical College.

The Council quick to respond to SMS college request has had a technical rescue team reach the premises, immediately.The repair team is likely to stay on for a day to put matters right.

The MCI acknowledging the biometric fiasco across the country’s medical colleges has in a communiqué to all suggested procedural lodging of complaints by all those suffering, reports TOI.

"All complaints regarding OFAMOS should be routed through the nominated nodal officer of medical colleges to ensure the authenticity of the complaints. Also, medical colleges may raise their complaints through their nodal officer, eight by calling IT helpdesk or through online," the letter says.