Now, 88 pc Chandigarh MC staff wear smart watches

Sandeep Rana
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 5

With the local Municipal Corporation making it mandatory for its about 4,000 employees to wear smart watches from May 1, about 88 per cent of them have started wearing them.

It is a big jump from about 55-60 per cent employees who were wearing watches before May 1. However, at present, only attendance is being monitored, not working hours. The watches track the live location of employees and field staff.

More and more employees started wearing these watches after Commissioner KK Yadav wrote to different wings to ensure that all employees wear watches as their salary will be credited based on their location status. It was earlier approved in MC House.

“The others who are not wearing these watches are either absent or on Covid duty at some other place. Now, almost all are wearing these watches,” said a senior MC officer.

The Municipal Officer of Health, Dr Amrit Warring, said: “The Commissioner had passed the orders for the implementation of the smart watch system. Now, our functioning in the sanitation department has improved. People will feel the change soon in terms of work.”

The sanitation wing had earlier opposed the watches alleging “faulty location”.

However, newly elected president of Safai Karamchari Union Sham Lal Ghavari said: “We have no issue in wearing the watches. We only want that there should be two work shifts: 6am-2pm and 2pm-10 pm. It will give us time to have lunch and dinner and we need not go back home for having food.”

Two-three deadlines were set earlier but the MC had failed to implement the system. In February last year, the civic body started distributing 4,000 watches to its employees to track their location. A three-year contract was signed with a private company to supply these watches.

The civic body has been paying about Rs18 lakh per month as rent of watches. The system was introduced after it was found there were many ghost employees in the MC field staff.

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