Low response to online attendance by health employees in Zilla Parishad

Nashik, Feb 7

Out of the 2,700 employees of Zilla Parishad’s Health Department, only 500 are regularly registering their online attendance. It has been found that the app that was launched six months ago and worth Rs 10 lakh is used by only 20 percent of the employees.

The issue of non-attendance of staff and officials in primary health centres and sub-centres in rural areas has come up again. The District Health Officer had received many complaints that the health workers under Zilla Parishad were not regular or full-time on duty. Against that backdrop, Chief Executive Officer of ZP Ashima Mittal had instructed the officers to make surprise visits to primary health centres and sub-centres, and also made a way to implement an app that checks attendance twice a day by issuing a tender.

In the second half of last year, since the employees were not present even when the biometric machines were installed, attendance was started directly through the app on the mobile phones of the employees. Attendance through selfies has been made compulsory for the employees of 112 primary health centres in the district, along with attendance photo updation, live location, and geo-tagging system has been used. More than six months have passed since the implementation of this app. However, more than a quarter of health workers have yet to respond to the online attendance process.

Some employees continue to refrain from using online attendance by saying that they are not using mobile phones, some have said that their mobile phones are running on a different operating system and this app is not available on it. The expectation that the smooth implementation of the system will start at least from the first month of the new year, has also failed. Since this attendance is only 20 percent till January, a question has arisen if the Zilla Parishad administration will take stringent action or not.