Misleading news reports telecast on some news channels and also circulating on social media, alleging that the lists of over 18,000 habitual absentees and absconders have been prepared for initiating disciplinary proceedings to extort money are devoid of any truth.
These news stories are false, fabricated and concocted, and have been crafted by unscrupulous people to discourage The School Education and Literacy Department from taking lawful action against absconders and habitual absentees. The department strongly condemns such malicious propaganda.
The biometric attendance system is Information Technology (IT) based, and is developed on an android mobile application, which synchronises school level indicators and biometric attendance of teachers with the server of the directorate general (DG) monitoring and evaluation (ME) on a real time basis. The attendance of teachers and staff is automatically recorded on the system, precisely showing the actual date and time of the visit of the monitoring assistant. The allegation that teachers have been marked absent on Sundays is not true. Even if any show cause notice has been issued to any teacher or staff showing his date of absence on any Sunday, it can merely be a typographical error.
With regards to the issue of change of biometric record of teachers or staff on their transfer and posting or removal of biometric record of expired and retired teachers or staff from the database, the approved and notified Monitoring and Evaluation Policy Guidelines 2017 clearly hold the district education officer (DEO) and director concerned responsible for change of biometric record of employees on transfer.
Therefore, it is the duty of the DEO and director concerned to get biometric record of teachers updated from the data center. No employee is required to visit the data center of the School Education and Literacy Department at the Sindh Secretariat for change of biometric record.
It further clarified that the aim of establishing ME directorate was to identify absconders from duties and habitual absentees on the basis of IT based biometric attendance evidence. Therefore, on receipt of the ME report, it was incumbent upon the department to initiate disciplinary proceedings and provide opportunity to the alleged absconders and habitual absentees to submit their replies and defend themselves.
The competent authorities and authorised officers that is the district education officers and directors are required under the law to initiate disciplinary proceedings and decide the cases in a judicious manner providing opportunity to the alleged employees of submitting his or her reply in writing and also of personal hearing. If this accountability process is not initiated, the results would be catastrophic for education of our children.
This department therefore strongly condemns such false propaganda being unleashed on electronic and social media to cast doubts on lawful and genuine actions of the department taken to promote accountability for good cause of education and in the public’s best interest.
