The Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government, which has been under constant pressure from the state government employees over timely payment of salaries, release of dearness allowance dues and implementation of pay revision commission recommendations for the last few weeks, has started bringing counter pressure on the employees.
Apparently, the government has found that many of the employees in the government offices and the state secretariat have been coming to their duties at their will and leaving early without even bothering to follow the office timings.
Since most of the employees have their families in Hyderabad, the previous Chandrababu Naidu government introduced five-day week for them.
So, they are habituated to leaving the office by 4 pm on Friday to go to Hyderabad. On Friday, they leisurely come to the offices by 11 am or even 12 noon.
Even on the remaining four days, they have been attending duties at 11 am.
“There is nothing wrong in asking for payment of salaries on the first day of the month and also their legitimate DA arrears and PRC implementation. But they should also realise their responsibility of attending to their duties on time,” a senior official said.
Now, the Jagan government issued a circular to all the departmental heads to make “biometric attendance system” compulsory for all the employees.
They should get entry into the offices only if they use these biometric machines that record their fingerprints, which show at what time they are attending to their duties and when they are going out.
The higher-ups would monitor the timings of the employees’ attendance regularly.
“A grace period of 5-10 minutes is okay, but if they continue to attend to the duties late, they would lose their leaves,” the official said.
The government has also instructed that each office should have at least 80 per cent attendance every day. Otherwise, the employees would be penalised.
It remains to be seen how the employees’ unions who have been fighting for their rights, would react to these new rules.