COIMBATORE: Following the state higher education department's directive, Bharathiar University has implemented the Biometric Attendance Marking System (BAMS) for teaching and non-teaching staff this month. The aim is to prevent the practice of arriving late, leaving early, or leaving intermittently from the office, without proper permission from the competent authority.
Bharathiar University Registrar R Rajavel told TNIE that last December, the state higher education department directed all universities to install BAMS to ensure that teaching and non-teaching staff adhere to official working hours. "Based on this, we implemented BAMS in the university on September 1, and as many as 45 machines have been installed across the campus. Following this, around 1,000 teaching and non-teaching staff register their biometric attendance by scanning their faces on the BAMS machines at 9.45 am and 5.30 pm," he said.
He added that if staff arrive late for over two days, it will be considered as casual leave, and he said that a staff member has been deployed to monitor this.
"Apart from this, work is underway to install more than 50 CCTV cameras at various locations on the campus, including inside and outside the premises and in the women's hostels, to ensure students' safety. A separate monitoring screen will be placed in my office to oversee activities within the university," he said.
A non-teaching staff member, who did not wish to be named, told TNIE that after the installation of BAMS in the university, a few staff members who used to arrive late have now started to come on time. He added that BAMS is necessary for universities and urged that officials should, however, review the attendance of all staff at least once a month.
Sources said last year, the higher education department had received complaints that many teaching and non-teaching staff of universities do not come on time, and some leave early. Based on this, former higher education secretary K Gopal ordered all universities to install BAMS, and now, BAMS has been implemented in Bharathiar University.