Officials say new system to ensure doctors’ presence
PESHAWAR: After failure of the biometric attendance and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) attendance mechanism, the boards of governors of Medical and Teaching Institutions (MTIs) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have decided to install an authentic swipe card system to ensure presence of doctors and other health workers in hospitals during duty hours.
Prof Dr Nausherwan Burki, chairman board of directors (BoG) LRH, told The News that they had decided to introduce swipe card mechanism with installation of visual recording system in the hospital to ensure 100 percent attendance of the staff.
“It will hopefully ensure staff attendance as this system has been in practice in many countries. We would install this system at six places in LRH to facilitate hospital employees in swiping cards during arrival and departure,” he added.
He said the RFID system had helped them ensure 85 percent staff attendance.The government had initially introduced biometric attendance system in some of the major teaching hospitals and had made plans to extend it to other institutions if it gave good results.
However, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department soon faced tough resistance after majority of doctors refused to follow the biometric attendance system. Some of them termed it a step against their dignity.
Though the punctual doctors and health workers had welcomed the attendance system, it didn’t work due to the incompetence of the interim administrative set-up in these hospitals.Installing the biometric attendance system at the public sector hospitals was one of the basic components of the reforms agenda that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had designed for overhauling the health sector and improving patient care.
Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai had launched the biometric attendance system in five public sector hospitals. However, members of doctors’ associations publicly opposed it.LRH was the first hospital where office-bearers of the Postgraduate Medical Institute Teaching Staff Association opposed it and asked hospital employees not to follow the biometric system.
This correspondent obtained record of the past six months of employees’ attendance in which the majority of LRH staff didn’t follow the biometric attendance. In one major specialty, only four employees out of almost 22 had regular six months attendance.
The government and BoGs had made biometric attendance mandatory for hospital employees. The BoGs had even decided to deduct salaries of the staff if found absent without any solid reason.
However, it never happened as the interim set-up was against health reforms and wanted to fail it.The head of a department in the LRH said he had brought several times into notice of former medical director and present hospital director that his staff was neither following the biometric attendance nor conducting evening ward round, but they overlooked his complaints.
“I requested that biometric record of my staff should be collected but the IT department and hospital administration refused to provide it to me as some of the habitual absentees are very influential and have been bribing people,” he alleged.
In LRH, where biometric system didn’t work, the BoG introduced RFID attendance system to further facilitate hospital workers.However, the BoG came to know that doctors, mostly seniors, started exploiting it. They used to give their RFID cards to low-ranked staff to mark their attendance and departure and come late and leave earlier.
Dr Nausherwan Burki admitted to have received complaints about lower staff using doctors’ RFID cards for marking attendance and departure.“The BoG had directed the previous hospital administration to take action against all absentees but it didn’t do so. Now we have decided to ensure staff attendance and take action against those not following it. In the first step, we will issue them showcause notice and then take severe action to suspend their salaries,” he said.
