Bio-metric Attendance System fails at Mumbai Medical colleges

Mumbai: The new Aaadhar Enabled Biometric Attendance system (AE-BAS) at Nair hospital already has the staff being woeful about it. Despite being there on time most were not been able to enter the premises before half an hour of the actual arrival time. All thanks to the glitches in the system. It took 5 minutes for every staff member to mark their attendance on the Biometric installations, at the entry points reports Midday adding that Absolute chaos has reigned over their routines.

Teething problems caused a delay of two hours in the average log-in time. After all the fuss created over the signing in a mere 20% of staffers were able to sign in.

According to a MID Day team that visited both- the Topiwala Medical College and BYL Nair hospital, at Mumbai Central confusion prevailing everywhere.

A staffer preferring to stay anonymous told the daily, "My duty time is 8.30 am and I arrived five minutes before time, but was shocked to find a huge line at the medical college building, where we were asked to register our attendance on the bio metric machine. It took up to 5 minutes for each staffer due to a glitch in the system. By the time my turn came, I was late by 30 minutes. We are allowed only 15 minutes of buffer time, which is unfair. This will only get more challenging during the monsoon."

According to the MID DAY data revelation, the first day of the bio metric system found very few numbers registered on the system. Of the 95,345 employees registered , only 72,364 were found to be active employees and a mere 14,321 could mark their attendance on the bio metric system. Only 399 devices of the 456 installed were found to be in working condition.

A BMC official responding to these numbers told Mid Day.com: "First, we need to filter out anyone who is not an active employee. Secondly out of 72,364 active employees, if only 14,321 were able to register their attendance, we will have to check if there were any technical glitches. As there is a short supply of biometric machines, we are hoping that additional machines are supplied at the earliest."

A circular issued by the Central Government in December 2016 asked all government and civic employees to register and start using AE-BAS, as per the formulation laid down by National Informatics Centre (NIC), explained Anil Raj Kaveskar.

"We are in the trial stage and want to address all the issues before the month-end. The bio metric machines are easy to operate and cost only Rs 2,800 each. We are sure that more devices will be installed at each and every civic-run office, educational institution, hospital, etc." HR professionals and field staffers have been deployed by the BMC, for smooth transition of the process.