In order to curb bogus attendance in residential and welfare schools for Scheduled Tribe (ST) students, the Andhra Pradesh Tribal Welfare Department (APTWD) has introduced the biometric system to record attendance in schools.
As of now, it has been initiated in Kurnool district on a pilot basis, and will be implemented across the State in a span of two months, said officials.
“Before introducing this, we took attendance online for a certain period and found out that there were some bogus ones marked for children who weren’t present,” said a senior official from the department, requesting anonymity. He explained that marking a child present when he/she is not in school would result in monetary loss to the State government, as the attendance is linked to amenities like food and other provisions.
Children's names
deleted from rolls
In fact, the APTWD has also updated the data of all the Ashram schools and hostels under it recently, which resulted in over 5,000 names of children being deleted from the rolls.
“We found out that they were not there. Computerising data has made it easier for us to curb wastage and such anomalies,” stated the official.
The senior official further said that for each attendance marked per student, three meals per day are allotted, which would be channelled due to bogus attendance.
“We have installed the biometric systems in six places for now in Kurnool district. After seeing if there are any hiccups, we will scale up operations,” mentioned a ground-level officer of the APTWD.
The officer added that when attendance was taken online for some time to check malpractices in the past, it was found out that Rs. 5,000 was being saved in Gurukulam schools.
As of now, 1,05,631 ST children are enrolled in Ashram schools and hostels, and another 40,000 in residential schools.
“However, there are about six lakh ST children in Andhra Pradesh, out of which around two lakh are in schools. To support all of them, the department needs Rs. 800 crore, but our entire budget outlay is only Rs. 1,100 crore, which is not sufficient,” the government official pointed out.
Before introducing the biometric system, we took attendance online for a certain period and found out that there were some bogus ones marked for children who weren’t present
A senior official
