The problem statement

Around 65,000 sweepers have been reportedly sweeping the streets of Hyderabad. It is said, “You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.” Reportedly, under the manual attendance system, skipping duty and still getting paid was quite an achievable feat for the staff.

GHMC’s responsibility and commitment to making Hyderabad one of the best cities in the country are indomitable, and the concerned officials wanted to keep a check on the irregularities in the attendance of sanitation staff. The officials wanted to ensure that the funds were being spent diligently and that there was no loophole that enabled proxy attendance.

Client name and details

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC)

Process

When we were approached by GHMC to verify the authenticity of the attendance and verify the money spent by the corporation in rolling out daily wages for the sweepers across the state, we suggested that GHMC ask the contractors or maistries to produce the list of names and Aadhaar numbers of all the sweepers, they claimed were working daily under their supervision.

After considerable and predictable resistance and protest from these maistries, the stats were provided. While some provided fake Aadhaar numbers, others provided the Aadhaar numbers of their kin. Based on this, a trend was discovered.

Solution incorporated 

Using a unique GPS-installed device to mark biometric attendance while working on the Aadhaar ecosystem was the most ideal solution to deal with this attendance menace and to avoid false wage claims. This pressed the city corporation to start implementing Aadhaar based attendance system through hand-held PoS-based devices.

Results

• Currently, about 35,000 sweepers mark their attendance daily with our solutions-based device that is easily accessible to the governing body. Sweepers working in multiple shifts smoothly mark their attendance and walk out with their wages without giving a chance to the contractors to make a profit at their expense and the expense of taxpayers. This also leads to the overall development of a segment of society by itself.

Highlights/stats

Savings of crores of rupees to the city corporation!

Around 1,200 Aadhaar-enabled handheld biometric attendance devices are used for registering attendance of the staff

Thanks to Aadhaar based attendance system, unauthorized absence from work has become a thing of the past

Fake, duplicate sweepers weeded out from the records

Transparency and accountability in operations are observed