A Ranchi Municipal Corporation employee registers his attendance on the biometric device on Monday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Beep, bunking is no longer an option.

The Ranchi Municipal Corporation’s hi-tech punctuality prod in the form of a biometric attendance system is making employees work their fingers to the bone. The 200-odd civic officials are not just warming their seats on time, but have also stopped doing their frequent vanishing acts.

Many officials, who were in the habit of staying away from work for days together without sanctioned leaves, are promptly sending applications to their seniors. So much so that the civic body is swamped with casual leave requests of up to 150 a month. Before the biometric attendance came into force, the number rarely exceeded 60.

“Earlier, some employees would bunk work for a day or two without furnishing a leave application. They would come back later and sign the attendance register when their seniors weren’t paying much attention. Now, their boss isn’t a man, but a biometric machine, which never fails to identify absentees,” an RMC official quipped.

On December 1, 2011, the civic body became the first government entity in Jharkhand to introduce biometric system to maintain a centralised attendance of its employees. Earlier, each section had its own manual register usually maintained by the section officer.

The RMC has 700-odd employees, of whom 200 register their attendance on the biometric device. The rest are fieldworkers and their attendance is still manually maintained. Casual leaves can be taken during an emergency by just informing one’s immediate senior, though the employee concerned has to submit a formal leave application when he rejoins duty. In other cases, one has to submit an application in advance.

Deputy chief executive officer of RMC Gopaljee Tiwari admitted that the biometric device recorded absence too and, hence, leave applications had become “regular”. “Casual leaves can be taken before submitting a formal application only if there is an emergency,” Tiwari reiterated, but insisted that the increase in number of leave requests might just be a coincidence.

RMC employees are required to register their attendance between 10.30am and 11am and can sign off at 5pm. Earlier, many sneaked away from office by 4pm, besides breezing in late for work.

The senior RMC official conceded that the percentage of attendance had gone up since last year and latecomers had corrected their wayward ways. “If an employee arrives late for three consecutive days, one casual leave is counted,” Tiwari said, explaining the reason why punctuality had become a virtue with civic employees.

The new system is also foolproof in verifying attendance. Under the manual register, it was difficult for RMC to keep track of attendance because proxy was also a norm. “But fingerprints are unique,” the deputy CEO added.