Despite the stiff opposition from the teaching community, the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh has made it mandatory for all the teachers in the state to mark their daily attendance in the face recognition mobile application from Thursday.
In fact, the order making it mandatory for all the teachers to download this face recognition application on their mobiles had been issued last month itself, but the teachers are refusing to download the same on various pretexts.
The government has introduced this new technology to ensure that teachers should compulsorily attend their duties on time and take classes. All these days, teachers got used to come at their own convenience after taking care of their personal activities.
Now with the latest application, they have to mark their attendance along with their faces in front of the schools, on dot. A grace period of 10 minutes would be allowed to mark their attendance along with their faces on the mobile application, which will be forwarded to the district education authorities.
The teachers say it amounts to suspecting their integrity. Secondly, they say many teachers in the rural areas have no wi-fi connectivity and even if they have the mobile data network, the application doesn’t function on time and takes its own time to upload the attendance.
They also complain about server issues, as the server is getting jammed due to two lakh teachers logging on the same at the same time.
But the government is firm on implementing the same. It said there are no data issues anywhere in the state and hence, their excuse cannot be entertained. Since a grace time of 10 minutes is being given, they can easily upload.
In the event of any issues, a statement from the headmaster or principal endorsing the teachers’ attendance will be considered for marking the attendance.
The government has also made it mandatory to upload the attendance of even students on this mobile application.
State education minister Botsa Satyanarayana is expected to have another round of meeting with the teachers’ unions to thrash out any issues in this exercise.