Mangalore, Feb 17: The New Mangalore Port Trust in a clarification to the allegations made by some employees and Unions with regard to scrapping of manual attendance system has said that the New Mangalore Port Trust is in the process of total automation and even HRD related issues come under this purview.
The employees remained away from duty on Saturday citing that the new system was introduced unilaterally by the Port Trust.
The NMPT in a release stated that as a part of total automation, it is proposed to replace the manual daily attendance registration of Class III and IV employees by electronic mode of registration, in a phased manner. The same system was already adopted for the cargo handling workers in December 2005 and Class I & II officers of the Port in 200. Electronic attendance system was proposed to be introduced for the Class III and IV employees working outside the Dock area with effect from February 16, 2013 and for those working in the Dock area in the next phase.
“While several rounds of meetings were held with the Union leaders, a crucial meeting was held February 7, 2013 where the Union leaders had agreed to the proposal with a request to consider their certain demands. They were informed that their demands would be taken up separately. In this regard, circular was also issued to the employees requesting them to give their specimen finger prints by February 8, 2013,” stated the release clarifying that they were also informed that on February 16, 2013 the bio-metric system of attendance will be introduced in place of manual attendance system.
“While in the process of taking specimen finger prints of the employees, some of the Union representatives prevented the employees from coming forward to give thump impression. To divert the issue, a complaint was lodged by one employee alleging that Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME), NMPT made derogatory remarks against him based on his caste, which is far from truth,” the release added.
The matter was discussed with the Assistant Labour Commissioner (ALC), Mangalore informally by the Port officers and the Union leaders on 15th Feb, 2013. The ALC categorically mentioned that there should not be any issue for the port employees to replace the existing manual registration of attendance to electronic system, as it is only a change in mode of registration of daily attendance, as the said system is prevailing in most of the organizations. As informed in writing to the port employees, on 16-2-2013 morning the Bio-metric/ Radio-frequency identification (RFID) system of attendance was made available to the employees of the Port. However, the employees came out of the Administration building and protested for the registration of daily attendance electronically.
Related: Scrapping of attendance register irks NMPT employees
Comments
Add new comment