By Praise Chinecherem
Anambra state government is to begin Bio-Metric capturing of its workforce in the state’s local government system.
The capturing exercise which began on Thursday has led to the installation of electronic register across the 21 local government area of the state where workers would be required to thumbprint their fingers and get samer recorded with their photographs alongside their time of arrival for work and dismissal, amongst others.
Chairman, Anambra state Local Government Service Commission, Hon. Vin Ezeaka, a lawyer, said the measure was to heck truancy, lateness to work, ghost workers and absenteeism with a view to instilling discipline, efficiency and productivity among workers in the system.
Describing the local government system as a very important tier of government, Ezeaka said it had been observed that a great many of workers in the system were either doing other jobs elsewhere or trading in the markets and only get to register their presence through proxies and got paid at the end of the month for doing nothing.
Bio-Metric register, he said would ensure that genuine workers in the local government were identified and then determine their salaries and emoluments pro-rata according to when and number of times they come to work.
“This is to help us determine the staff strength and actual workers in the system,” he said.
He explained further that at the end of the exercise, those found to be perennially absent from work without authorization would be weeded out of the system.
According to him, the commission had made a request to the state governor, Prof. Charles Soludo for the employment of about 3, 000 junior and middle level workers, to augument the shortfall in that category of workers last employed in 2004 but who have now become senior officers in the state’s local government system.
