Haryana govt. to track real-time location of employees for attendance

The Government of Haryana is trying to bring more transparency and accountability into the system, and how! In a ‘Vikas Rally’ in Sarmathla village in Sohna, Haryana, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced that all state employees of Haryana will be required to wear a smartwatch enabled with GPS tracking technology. The objective is to monitor the real-time location of state-government employees during work hours. Their attendance will also be marked on the basis of their real-time location tracked via these smartwatches.

Some of the staff are not happy with this decision as they feel their privacy is being breached. The GPS-enabled system has already been introduced at the Panchkula Municipal Corporation and Chandigarh administration.

At the rally held on Saturday, Khattar explained that the state government employees kept finding loopholes to mark fake attendance. When registers were being used to capture the attendance data, many employees would simply come once a week and mark their attendance for all other days and then not really report for work. To tackle this issue, and bring in some discipline amongst the workforce, the state government introduced the biometric system.

However, then the state government found that employees had started creating fake fingerprints using rubber. These prints were given to another person to mark attendance in their absence! Also, the government had to discontinue the biometric system due to COVID-19 protocols. The Chief Minister then told his team to find a solution to this problem, which resulted in the GPS tracking system suggestion. The smartwatches will function only in the hands of the owner and their real-time location will be monitored through the control room.