Biometric attendance dents civic staffs’ pay

Mumbai: The biometric attendance system, which has been made compulsory in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), has troubled the civic staff. The system is proving to be harsh on employees, especially engineers, who perform outdoor duty, resulting in a deduction in their salaries, they have alleged. 

To protest against this, all 4,200 engineers in the BMC from Monday have refused to carry out additional work and have started working only as per the duty hours. 

The engineers have also threatened to go on indefinite strike if their grievances are not addressed. “The biometric system should not be applied to civic engineers, who work outdoors. Engineers, especially from the road department, have to work late in the night to complete the road works. However, after midnight they cannot mark their outgoing attendance on the biometric system, as it shows the beginning of a new day. Failure to mark the outgoing attendance has resulted in a deduction in salaries of several engineers,” said Sukhdev Kashid, president, Municipal Engineers Association.

“The two-and-half-hour break in engineers’ duty hours, which has been going since the British era, should be scrapped immediately. Consid-ering that most of the staff live far away from the city, they should be given consecutive duty hours,” said Sainath Rajadhyaksha, executive president of Brihanmumbai Munici-pal Engineers Union.

BMC Engineers work from 8 am to 12 pm noon and 2.30 pm toa 5.30 pm with a break in between.

Sudhir Naik, deputy municipal commissioner, general administration, assured that all demands of engineers would be looked into.