Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Nov 02: Like many other departments, the Health Department has also extensively purchased the Biometric Attendance Machines and installed it in most of the PHCs, CHCs and District Hospitals. Several other BAMs were installed in GB Pant Hospital and in the Directorate of Health Services Building but many question whether installation of dozens and dozens of BAMs serve its purpose.
Many allege that a few doctors at G B Pant do not bother to register their attendance in Biometric Machines on time while in many PHCs and CHCs doctors reach only after 9.30 AM. The employees below Doctor class, allege that rules are for only lower level staffs and not for Doctors. In places like Kalighat the Doctors follow their own timing of arrival and departure, sometimes even in case of absence the attendance is registered by some magic. Andaman Sheekha had once highlighted how a DRM at Kalighat Hospital had made entries in attendance registered for the entire week in advance but till now no action has been taken in this regard.
Irony is that many health department staffs do not even have their biometric thumb marks registered and they come and go as per their own timing. Some even run their business like ticketing agency etc during duty hours. This can be checked by any officer by cross checking Biometric Attendance, mobile phone location and ticketing site log in entry details etc.
Most interestingly the DHS follows dual attendance entry system, which means that every employee will have to enter attendance in BAM and also in attendance register. One wonders if this is the case then what is the need of having BAMs installed.
It seems the DHS needs to give some strong and bitter medicines to these employees, who are breaking rules, to bring the Health department’s system back to health. On one hand our Prime Minister and our Lt. Governor work for 10 to 12 hours in a day and on the other hand some staffs do not give even 5 hours output in Health Department, then how can the system improve.
The DHS or anyone can take the Biometric attendances under RTI to know how effectively and efficiently the Health Department functions in these Islands, especially in remote Islands.
