Defunct biometric attendance devices (circled in red) at MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur. Picture by Gopal Krishna Reddy

Berhampur, June 9: All efforts to improve attendance of employees of the MKCG Medical College and Hospital have fallen flat as 14 biometric attendance machines that were introduced about two years ago are lying defunct.

The system was installed as part of the National Rural Health Mission to record attendance of nearly 700 employees based on registered fingerprints. The cost of the project could not be immediately ascertained.

“All the biometric attendance devices became defunct a few months after the system was introduced. We had requested the authority to restore these devices several times, but nothing has happened so far,” said Prafulla Kumar Das, senior manager of the hospital.

“A Bhubaneswar-based company, which had installed the machines, was also in charge of its maintenance. I don’t know whether that company was at fault or if we failed to handle the devices properly,” he said.

It was hoped that the biometric attendance system would help in making available all hospital staff, including doctors, in time to provide more timely service to patients. Records of the medical staffs’ entry and exit from the college and hospital were kept in a digitised manner, which was a deterrent for medical staff playing truant.

The Bhubaneswar-based company had registered the electronic prints of the index finger of both the hands of the employees and took individual photographs. The process was launched in November 2011 and continued for a few months. Official sources said that three attendance devices were fitted in the college and the remaining 11 were installed in various parts of the hospital.

“The employees of the medical college and hospital have now gone back to the old practice of signing the registers,” said hospital superintendent Ashok Kumar Behera.