PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa higher education department has directed the administrative heads of government colleges in the province to install biometric attendance machines on campus in the range of closed-circuit television cameras to ensure their safety.

The principals have also been told to conduct inquiry into the matter for punishment of the culpable persons, sources told Dawn.

The development comes over the reports suggesting the machines have been tampered with in several colleges.

The department has installed biometric attendance system six months ago at the government colleges in the province at the cost of Rs22 million to ensure the teachers’ presence on campus during duty hours.

The sources said after the machines were in place, the department didn’t operationalise the new attendance system for the first three months over the reservations of teachers.

Higher education dept orders inquiry into matter

They said the machines became functional last month (January) only at the intervention of the relevant authorities, who rejected the teachers’ reservations, but after one month, reports emerged that the equipment were tampered with in different colleges.

“Someone scratched the ‘glass scanning area’ commonly known as fingerprint area of the biometric machine fixed at the Government Girls Degree College Lund Khwar, Mardan, and therefore, the machine is not accepting fingerprints of school staff members,” a source said.

He said biometric machine in one college was found damaged by the use of glue.

An official in the know said the department had asked all college principals to ensure biometric machines are fitted in the range of the CCTV cameras installed on the premises.

Asked whether the department will provide additional funds for installation of CCTV cameras, he said it had already given money for the fixing of at least six such cameras for security purpose.

The official said the presence of biometric machines in the range of CCTV cameras would help identify the persons involved in tampering with the machines.

He said the department would repair the ‘damaged’ biometric machines and that the college principals had been told if machines weren’t protected in future, they would be held responsible.

The sources said of the total 230 colleges, biometric machines hadn’t become functional in 61 colleges due to the ‘lame excuses’ of the respective administrations.

They said principals of such collages had informed the department that the biometric machines were ‘out of order’ though they’re checked regularly for repairs.

An official of the department wondered how biometric machines could be out of order when they didn’t become functional for a single day.

He also rejected the claim that many biometric machines weren’t operational due to the unavailability of electricity saying only three or four colleges in the province don’t have electric supply.

When asked about the fears that the hours long power outages could render biometric attendance machines dysfunctional, sources said the equipment could work for a week if their batteries were charged for 30 minutes.

They said it was clear that the excessive loadshedding was common across the province but there was not a single area, where electricity was not available even for 30 minutes a week.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2017