In its determination to ensure that all its civil servants, particularly teachers, take their duties seriously by reporting to duty promptly and stop closing before time, the Bauchi State government has introduced handheld fingerprint device to clock workers in and out of their duty posts.
This, according to the goverment, will subsequently qualify them for being paid their monthly salaries and allowances.
While explaining the function of the device, the Commissioner of Education, Dr Aliyu Usman Tilde, said that it was introduced by the ministry in order to put the menace of ghost workers, absenteeism and indolence under check.
Tilde lamented that before his appointment as the commissioner, more than half of workers in the ministry were deeply involved in the attitude of shunning their duty posts, which he noted had hindered the progress of the state’s education sector. He said: “We now have the device in all the 219 secondary schools under the ministry. We have had a case of a teacher who only attended his school seven times in 11 years. When I assumed office, I requested for the attendance register of various schools, but the statistics was not encouraging at all. About 53.5 per cent of the teachers weren’t resuming at their duty posts at all and they were all receiving the monthly payment.
“Given their large number, it is easy for many of them to hide. A lot of them are in the rural areas and this makes it very difficult to reach them for monitoring and evaluation.”
However, when you called for their attendance book, you would see that everyone was present and resumed work before 8am even if he or she wasn’t there physically.”
The commissioner added also that there would be a deadline for attendance and any worker below the timeline would not receive salary for the month.
“We are going to put a benchmark that will reflect if you are there or not. People go to work 23 days in a month, but we may decide to put a minimum of 17 to 19 days in a month and anything short of that, the person won’t be paid,” he said.
For genuine cases of absence from work, he said it must be reported in accordance with the rules.
“With the introduction of the device, teachers in the state have been resuming work before 8am. I think as far as monitoring secondary schools’ activities is concerned in Nigeria, we are the first to deploy a device for it,” Tilde said.
The commissioner noted that the development was applauded by the workers’ union in the state and that he can now, through the data gathered by the device, monitor the number of lessons each teacher teaches in a week, month and all through the year.
He pointed out that their performances are also going to be recorded by the device, which will qualify them for promotion and appointment.