Karnataka - Hubli-Dharwad   

Employees at DC’s office will now have smart cards

Staff Correspondent

It will register attendance and keep track of their work timings

HUBLI: The Deputy Commissioner’s office in Dharwad has become the first Deputy Commissioner’s office in the State to introduce Computerised Attendance Tracking System (CATS) for employees.

Employees who have been signing the attendance register all these days will now use the smart cards given to them to register their attendance.

The system will not only register attendance of employees but will also keep track of the timing at which the employees leave the office. Each employee has to show his or her smart card on the “Smart Card Reader” twice a day, when they enter the office in the morning and the when leaving in the evening.

The Deputy Commissioner himself will also use the card.

The system will keep track of those employees and officials who habitually arrive late to work.

The new system has cost the district administration Rs. 95,000 and a Bangalore-based company Radient Infosystems Private Limited has installed it and will look after the maintenance of the system for a year.

“Suppose the office timing is 10 a.m. there will be a grace period of 10 minutes to register attendance.

Any employee showing his or her card after 10.10 a.m. will be considered a latecomer and the information will be stored in the data bank,” Ravindra Reddy, a software engineer in the company, said.

Mr. Ravindra said some staff of the Deputy Commissioner’s office had been trained on how to operate the system and access the data.

When an employee wants to apply for leave he has to contact the person concerned who would upload the leave requisition, he added. From Tuesday, officials and staff of the Deputy Commissioner’s office have started using the smart cards given to them, which carry the complete details of employees.

However, they are also signing the attendance register.

Since the employees would need time to get accustomed to the smart cards, it has been decided to give them till June 30 to use it properly, a senior official said.

Another reason is that some employees were yet to be issued the smart cards.

There are 90 employees belonging to various departments Revenue, Food and Civil Supplies and Urban Development Cell. Of them, 83 have been issued smart cards. The remaining would be also be issued cards in a couple of days.

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