Facial recognition attendance for sanitation staff of Shimla MC soon

Shimla, June 22

Amid controversy over some sanitation workers not turning up for work and withdrawing salary, the Shimla MC has decided to introduce facial recognition biometric attendance system soon.

The issue of sanitation workers not doing their work or turning up at the respective ward assigned to them was brought up by Harish Janartha, MLA from Shimla (Urban) during the MC house meeting last month. He along with other ward councillors had called for an inspection and appropriate action against those found withdrawing salary and not doing the work.

A resolution was passed regarding the introduction of a mechanism that can ensure that sanitation workers mark their attendance/presence and work at their respective ward.

MC Commissioner Ashish Kohli said, “We are under process to introduce facial recognition based biometric attendance system for sanitation workers so that they turn up at the respective ward and do their work on daily basis. We are planning to procure and install 40 attendance machines in different wards so that workers can mark their attendance there and, unlike earlier, they do not have to travel to office to do the same. If need be, we can procure more machines later.”

“The estimated cost for procuring these machines would be around Rs 4 lakh and for marking attendance, workers, who carry out cleaning work, will not have to touch the machine as it is facial recognition biometric machine,” added Kohli.

There have been complaints from local residents that sanitation workers do not come to their wards to carry out cleaning work. Hence, the SMC officials have decided to toughen stance.