AMC battles proxies with biometrics

AHMEDABAD: The airport authorities in the US may be trying to weed out terrorists by using biometrics and recording fingerprints of all travellers, but the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has found another use for it.
The technology will be used to tackle absenteeism!
Ahmedabad municipal commissioner P Panneervel wants to implement the biometrics system of marking attendance through thumb impressions to tackle large-scale absenteeism in his organisation.Once implemented, an employee’s attendance will only be marked after he has verified his thumb impression with the database that the authorities are in the process of developing.
Senior officials believe the system will help track the performance of each of the 30,000 employees. The AMC says the system will be put in place within the next three months.
Not surprisingly, employees’ unions have already started opposing the move.
Senior civic officials want the system in place to increase productivity levels and reduce proxy attendance, which is very common. "It’s very difficult to keep an eye on every person in such a large organisation, especially when almost every department has proxy presence," says a senior civic official.
At present, the system is being used by 60 supervisors deployed at six civic centres of the city. They have to verify the thumb impressions to gain access to the centralised database if changes are required to be made in a building plan or even a correction in the property tax papers.
"We are using it for the first time in the country," Panneervel told TNN during the launch of the e-governance project at the City Civic Centre in Law Garden recently.
"We are the only organisation in the world to implement it for public use," he claimed. However, some government and non-government organisations are using the technology for limited purpose to ensure proper authentication and foolproof security.
"Biometrics is certainly a good idea. It will ensure the physical presence of a particular employee at the muster station," says J G Hingarajia, deputy municipal commissioner, West zone. He admitted that almost all departments are facing the problem of proxy presence.
The AMC is battling absenteeism in the three vital departments of town planning, engineering and health. Most culprits can be found at the ward level, dealing with maintenance of daily services like water supply, sewerage and street lighting.
Panneervel says that in the end this technology will benefit residents of the city as they will get better services, as fewer officials will be able to remain absent and productivity will increase.
"The machines, costing Rs 30,000 each, are primarily meant for attendance, but will give a lot of inputs on manpower management," says Nalin Patel, director of Microtech Systems, the company involved in the AMC’s e-governance project.
According to him, you can still manage to hoodwink the system with smart cards and swipe cards but it will ensure compulsory presence of a particular employee at the office at least once in a day.