HYDERABAD: Some employees of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation are thwarting the implementation Aadhaar-linked Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) to cover their misdeeds, it is learnt.
To keep a check on the irregularities found in the attendance of GHMC sanitation workers, the corporation has introduced AEBAS by employing handheld PoS devices a few weeks ago to remove benami and bogus workers. Some officials at the zonal and circle levels, however, sabotaged the exercise, fearing that their wrongdoings would be exposed.
The GHMC has around 22,000 sanitary workers and it is alleged that 25 to 30 percent of those claiming salaries are not on the rolls but claiming salaries under ‘benami and bogus names’ with the connivance of some officials.
GHMC spends ` 27.50 crore a month on salaries to these workers but about ` 7 crore is allegedly pocketed by fake workers, causing a huge loss to the civic body. As per norms, one sanitation should have seven workers but in many places only four or five workers are work and the remaining are ‘benamis’ and their salaries are claimed by contractors with the connivance of officials.
With an intention to cleanse the system and eradicate bogus names, GHMC commissioner B Janardhan Reddy introduced AEBAS, a first of its kind in the country, a few weeks ago.
Officials at zonal and circle levels, however, thwarted its implementation and got it suspended citing that the details of workers are not updated at Aadhaar Centre. In many instances, it was found that fingerprints did not match as they were either not clear or wornout.
The commissioner told Express that those workers not having Aadhaar would be asked to enrol and update at the nearest Aadhaar centre where fingerprints are not clear or wornout, GHMC is identifying such cases and providing them iris-based attendance capturing system.
He said that capturing of around 22,000 sanitary workers’ attendance through AEBAS is taking place for first time in the country. In the initial stage of project implementation, certain issues have cropped up and will be addressed one by one to make the project successful.
Currently, SFAs are collecting the attendance of sweepers working under SFAs and the same is being updated at the GHMC.
However, there are cases wherein the number of sweepers is shown higher or the attendance of sanitary workers is manipulated by giving false information even though they were absent at times. Due to lack of efficient management system on the field, the GHMC is ending up paying more salary than needed.
Also, a study of biometric-based attendance for sanitation workers in Circle 8 for six months has revealed that 30 percent of the workers are bogus.
To address these issues, it was decided to have end-to-end solution by envisaging AEBAS-based handheld device project wherein genuine sweepers working in field identification is determined by authenticating his/her biometrics.
The project objectives include timely capture of attendance of sweepers shift wise, prevention and control of misuse of manual attendance system, maintenance of transparency and accountability in operations and weeding fake sweepers out.