Employees warned against taking EPM casually
* No vigilance clearance till filing of online property return
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Nov 30: Taking note of low record of employees biometric attendance particularly in the field offices, Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta has issued fresh directions for strict compliance to the orders issued in this regard from time to time. Moreover, he has sounded warning wells for those employees who are taking directives regarding Employees Performance Monitoring (EPM) portal casually.
In terms of Government Order No. 650-JK (GAD) of 2022 dated 02.06.2022, instructions were issued to all Government Offices, PSUs, Institutions and Corporations across Jammu and Kashmir to switch over to Biometric System (Aadhar or Finger Print Based) with immediate effect and all employees were directed to necessarily mark their attendance both at arrival and departure as per the notified office hours of various offices.
Further, all Administrative Secretaries, HoDs and Managing Directors of PSUs/ Corporations/ Institutions were directed to ensure installation of Biometric Attendance Systems/Equipments in all offices and institutions under their administrative control. All DDOs were also directed to draw salaries of employees only on the basis of satisfactory biometric attendance.
However, it has come to the notice of Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta that there was cumulative achievement of 42% of employees biometric attendance mainly attributed to the field offices, official sources told EXCELSIOR, adding he has asked all the concerned to workout/explore a way out to have the attendance of all employees in the field recorded biometrically and till then such employees will have to record their attendance through the means of any other location based mobile application.
“No doubt there is strict compliance to the biometric attendance system in urban areas but it has been seen that those employees who stay in the nearby vicinity leave the office premises either with the consent of controlling officers or without their knowledge in the middle of working hours and due to this office work suffers immensely”, sources informed and stressed that some mechanism should also be evolved to check this tendency. They suggested that surprise check should be conducted in the offices to see the level of compliance of the directives regarding eight hours duty in the Government offices.
In the month of February this year, the Government had launched Employees Performance Monitoring (EPM) portal in order to capture the monthly work performance of the employees and officers of all the departments and appraisal thereof by their respective reporting/controlling officers.
The aim was to provide a mechanism for self-appraisal to the Government employee on one hand and on the other hand to provide a readily available means to the higher authorities for monitoring and better human resources management.
However, the Chief Secretary has observed that cumulative achievement with regard to Employees Performance Monitoring has been recorded to be 81% even several months after the launch of EPM portal, sources said, adding the Chief Secretary has now directed all the departments to ensure that each and every employee fills in the details on monthly basis.
“Similarly, there is no 100% compliance of the directions regarding filing of online property returns”, sources said, adding “in a recent high-level meeting the Chief Secretary was apprised of the situation and accordingly he has reiterated the earlier directions that all employees are mandatorily required to fill in their property return online. He has directed the Secretary, General Administration Department that any employee who fails to submit an online property return should be denied Vigilance clearance.
It is pertinent to mention here that various technological interventions have been made by the Government in human resource management field like Vigilance portal, EPM portal and Biometric Attendance System which are aimed at making working transparent.
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