Chennai: Facial Recognition-Based Attendance System

Objecting to the proposal of implementing a facial recognition-based attendance system for government doctors, the Service Doctors and Post Graduates recently approached the Chief Secretary of the State Government.

Writing to the Chief Secretary, the General Secretary of Service Doctors and Post Graduates Association (SDPGA), A. Ramalingam questioned the need to implement such an attendance system for doctors employed under the Directorates of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Medical and Rural Health Services, The Hindu has reported.

As per the rules of the National Medical Commission (NMC), doctors working in the Directorate of Medical Education have to mark their biometric attendance.

The Hindu had earlier reported that NMC back in 2022 had directed all the medical colleges across the country to install biometric attendance machines for regularly capturing the attendance of human resources as specified in the regulations.

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In the UG-MSR 2023 also, NMC had specified that all medical colleges shall install an Aadhaar-Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) to be linked to Command and Control center of NMC and the daily AEBAS of the required staff (faculty, residents and supporting staff), preferably along with face linked recognition, shall be made available to NMC as well as on the Medical College Website in the form of daily attendance dashboard. The Commission had also issued directions for installing CCTV cameras in the medical colleges.

While the mandatory requirement of marking their biometric attendance is valid for the doctors working under the Directorate of Medical Education, SDPGA has questioned the need to implement such an attendance system for doctors employed under the Directorates of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Medical and Rural Health Services.

As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the association said that according to the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS), 30,000 doctors were needed for the existing patient load and bed strength in the government hospitals. However, as of now, there are only 20,000 sanctioned posts and around 4,000 of those are lying vacant. Due to the shortage of available doctors, those in service were overburdened and compelled to do 24-hour duty as well.

Opposing the enforcement of facial recognition-based attendance system on qualified professionals, SDPGA has demanded that biometric attendance be implemented for government doctors only after the severe manpower shortage were addressed.

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