Indian railway workers unload freight from a train at the New Delhi Railway station in New Delhi
NEW DELHI — The Indian government on Tuesday launched a campaign to end notoriously slack time-keeping among its millions of civil servants by introducing biometric scanners at offices in the capital New Delhi.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram arrived punctually at work to kick off the drive to improve efficiency within India’s vast bureaucracy, which has a reputation for endless delays and reams of duplicated paperwork.
India’s central government employs about three million civil servants — including all railway workers — while federal states employ about another seven million.
“This is a message to the whole country that everyone must do his work for the allotted hours,” Chidambaram told reporters.
“I understand flexi time, we will introduce some flexibility. Flexibility is if you come 10 or 15 minutes late, you have to work for another 10 or 15 minutes.”
In the first stage of the scheme, 5,000 home ministry employees — regardless of rank — will have their index fingers scanned to register the time they arrive and leave work.
Any employee who is late three times in a month will have to give up a day-off.
A home ministry official said that Chidambaram, a veteran politician, had always been punctual and was “very particular about officials arriving on time.”
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