The Hans India: Hyderabad: Wednesday,
July 13, 2016.
If the staff
attendance register of Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) is
to be believed, at least 10 per cent of the employees do not attend office, but
draw salary with impunity.
An RTI
application filed by The Hans India on the attendance by HMDA officials exposes
this irregularity. According to HMDA’s biometric attendance register for June
2016, at least 65 of the total 520 officials stayed away from office for the
entire month.
Highlights:
· Officials claim that a few employees have been exempted
from using the system But there is some discrepancy in giving exemption
· The timings of arrival and departure of some employees
have been manually set
There are
more than 100 staff members who were absent from office for more than 10 days
at a stretch. There are hardly 30 per cent of the officials who have been
sincerely following the biometric register.
The RTI query
has not only revealed that the officials have remained absent from the office
but also brought to the fore the HMDA administration’s partial attitude towards
a few of its employees who continue to dodge the biometric system and get their
attendance regularised.
According to
the data furnished by HMDA under the RTI Act, it was found that the biometric
attendance of these officials, who had been absent, was manually set as they
came in at 10.30 am and left at 5 pm.
Strangely,
the timing has remained the same for all 30 days of the month. Several senior
officials refused to talk on the subject, saying these officials were from the
Planning, Urban Forestry and HGCL departments and they had to move around the
city for executing various works under HMDA.
The HMDA was
reluctant to disclose information on their attendance record under RTI Act and
denied providing the information to The Hans India, claiming it as internal
data. The information was revealed on June 29, following the filing of a first
appeal in which the First Appellant Authority, HMDA Secretary, N Madhusudhan
(who was transferred a few days ago), instructed officials to provide the
information on attendance to public.
A few have
been exempted from using the mandatory biometric attendance at HMDA. Thet
include a few HoDs, Metropolitan Commissioner, ORR Project Director, HMDA
Secretary, Member Estates, Member Environment and two Planning Directors. Strangely, the biometric attendance system is
compulsory for some other HoDs like Enforcement, Information Technology (IT),
Engineering, and Accounts Departments.
It was found
that the head of HMDA Engineering Department (Chief Engineer) remained absent
for the entire month and the Accounts Department head and the Chief Accounts
Officer (CAO) attended to only one day’s work in the June as per the biometric
register.
The timings
of the head of the Enforcement Cell, Deputy Superintendent of Police have been
set at: in-time 10.30 am and out-time 5 pm as per the accepted schedules for
the whole month.
Metropolitan
Commissioner T Chiranjeevulu said they had given exemption to few employees
working in the field work by marking their attendances on on-duty forms which
are cleared and looked after by the respective heads of the department. “I will
look into the matter and will see if there is anything wrong in it,” he said.
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