Bhubaneswar, April 2: The municipal corporation has introduced biometric attendance system to ensure regular and punctual attendance of its employees.

The civic body had installed three biometric machines at its main building, tax section and engineering block and asked all the officials to mark their attendance regularly or face action.

The corporation has fixed arrival and departure timings for employees and implemented stringent rules to ensure that there are no violations to it.

According to records, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) would take the attendance of about 800 officials through the new system every day.

"We have decided to introduce a fully automated attendance system for all our staff. An agency has been hired that will take care of the new system. Earlier, we were using the manual attendance system. The biometric attendance system would ensure that the staff work regularly," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

According to the timings, the officials need to enter the office between 8.30 am and 10.30 am and leave after 5 pm. If any official is found coming late or leaving office early for three continuous days, the BMC will deduct a day's salary.

"The move is to ensure that officials don't get irregular in their work. The sanitation workers have also been included in the automated attendance system. We have included the sanitary staff since there were complaints that they are not regular in their work. In this new system, they cannot lie or skip office," said a civic official.

In the next phase, the municipal corporation has also decided to install closed-circuit-television (CCTV) cameras inside the office. The plan to introduce the facility is being executed under the BMC's office automation project. The office will have about 30 CCTV cameras placed at various locations.

"There will be a central server where all data of the estaff, including their employee code and biometric details, will be stored. The database will be updated and maintained regularly by the service providers. There will also be a central room for monitoring images captured by CCTV cameras," the official said.

Among the sanitation workers, only the regular ones have been included in the new biometric attendance system whereas those working for private agencies have been excluded.

At present, there are about 3,000 sweepers, drain cleaners, garbage collectors and bush cutters working with the BMC to keep the city clean.