2,000 civic bosses' pay docked for not updating juniors' attendance

The civic body's 1.05 lakh employees maintain their attendance records online; the BMC began taking steps to go digital since February 2018, with the attendance system being a part of it. Representation pic/Getty Images

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's human resources (HR) department seems to be facing a tough time going digital with its department heads, mid-level managers and supervisory officials refusing to follow the new online attendance system. Officials in the three levels have been held responsible for not adjusting the leave of their subordinates on the BMC's online portal. This has led to a 10 per cent deduction from their salaries for the month of July.

Around 2,000 employees across the three levels lost 10 per cent of their gross monthly salary for not updating their team members' records up to June 30. FROM Class 4 employees to the deputy civic commissioner, as many as 1.05 lakh employees work at the BMC. The civic body decided to go paperless in February 2018 with an online biometric attendance registering system. Supervisory personnel, mid-level managers and HODs are responsible for ensuring that the online attendance of their staff is recorded correctly. However, they have failed to do so for months.

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"Some Class 4, Class 3 employees and other staff could not register their attendance on the biometric system in a particular period due to their outdoor or election duties. Their records show 'Absent Not Maintained (ANM)' which needs to be adjusted by their reporting heads by the 13th of every month. Failure in doing this results in the employee's salary getting deducted," explained a civic officer.

"These employees raised an objection in this regard a few days ago and we have now cleared their balance amount accordingly," he added. The civic chief has now given an ultimatum to the senior officials asking them to regularise all records by September 13 failing which the HODs, mid-level managers and supervisory officials' salary for September will be withheld for not complying with their responsibilities.

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'We aren't clerks'

At the civic-run medical colleges and hospitals, senior faculty and HODs are upset with the development. "We are not clerical staff. It is unfortunate that instead of focusing on quality of treatment being given to patients and helping out students academically, we are expected to keep updating the records of our juniors. We are also being penalised for failing to do so," said an HOD from BYL Nair hospital and medical college.

Dr Paras Kothari, secretary of Sion Medical Teachers Association and a paediatric surgeon, wrote to the civic commissioner on August 8 stating, "The recording of attendance of faculty members, technicians and servants was the responsibility of the college establishment before the implementation of the system. We have other clinical, academic and administrative duties to fulfill and this additional responsibility will come in way of executing them properly and patients care will suffer."

'Lame excuses'

According to a senior civic officials, these were lame excuses for not adhering to the norm of going digital and paperless. "Class 3 and 4 employees are using their mobile applications when on outdoor duty and on leave and an SMS alert immediately goes to the reporting boss who has to either approve or disapprove the request and the same goes to the next level of a supervisory officer accordingly," the official said.

"But since the records are not updated at the immediate level of reporting, the mid-level and HOD do not bother to regularise records, thereby causing discrepancies in the attendance record of Class 3 and 4 staff," he added. "We want to bring in accountability along with transparency in a paperless form. These supervisory staff would earlier sign leave application and outdoor duty papers of their junior staff which is no more expected. All they need to do is, update their record on a daily basis instead of creating a backlog," the civic official stated.

1.05 lakh
No. of BMC employees

Sept 13
Final deadline for regularisation

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