PANAJI
Empty desks and counters at village panchayats with staff playing truant could soon be a thing of the past with the Directorate of Panchayats set to instill a degree of punctuality and discipline by introducing biometrics to track attendance of employees in all the 191 village bodies across Goa.
Some of these village panchayats have already installed the gadgets of their own volition but there was no centralised monitoring of the attendance, which the department now hopes to put in place with this decision which involves linking the system to a central server.
The proposal was discussed and finalised at a meeting earlier this week chaired by Panchayat Minister Mauvin Godinho where officials were instructed to gather information as to how many panchayats have the biometric machines in working condition and estimate the total requirement.
New machines will be procured and the State government's Goa Electronics Limited (GEL) and the central government's National Informatics Centre (NIC) will be roped in to assist.
Officials who attended the meeting included Deputy Director of Panchayats Prasiddha Naik, GEL's CEO Revati Kumar, GEL Manager Sangita Kadnekar, DoP (Administration) Krishnakant Pangam, NIC Scientist Satesh Redkar, NIC Officer Sameer Datar and Goa Infotech Corporation' Venkatesh Babladi.
Besides providing technical advice, GEL and NIC will also be tasked with procurement of the biometric machines
An official present at the meeting also said that no specific timeline has been set, although Godinho has issued instructions to procure the machines at the earliest.
Goa has a total of 191 panchayats which collectively have some 700-odd employees including panchayat secretaries and DoP officials are hoping that with biometrics, punctuality and attendance of staff will get tightened.
Centrally, the department inclusive of all the offices of the BDOs, has an additional 300 employees.
As for the panchayats, most have a secretary and a clerk, some others have two clerks and a few more have as many as four.
