E-Attendance App Glitches; Salaries Of Guest Teachers Unpaid For 5 Months

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A section of guest teachers working for the School Education Department of Madhya Pradesh Government have not received their salaries since September last year due to technical glitches in the e-attendance app.

These teachers are mainly deployed in schools in remote areas where mobile connectivity is not available. As a result, they have not been able to mark their attendance on the app leading to withholding of their salaries.

Atithi Shikshak Samanvay Samiti alleged that guest teachers and their families are starving because of the government failure to remove the technical glitches in e-attendance app.

Recently, the portal did not function properly for several days as the server was down. Despite this, strict measures are being taken regarding the attendance and honorarium of guest teachers. The latest incident is from January, where only 30 days are being displayed in the e-attendance app instead of 31.

In January, along with four government holidays, a local holiday was also declared on January 14, but the app only shows four government holidays. And it affected the attendance calculation of guest teachers. Similarly, in districts where a government holiday was declared due to by-elections in December, one day’s honorarium was deducted from the guest teachers’ pay. Despite the government-declared holiday, guest teachers suffered financial losses.

According to State secretary of the committee, Ravikant Gupta , there are many guest teachers in the state who did not have smartphones until September, due to which they were unable to mark their attendance online. They received their honorarium for July-August in October, and thereafter they purchased mobile phones and started using the e-attendance system. Despite this, their payment for September was withheld, which is completely unfair, said Gupta.

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The technical glitches in the e-attendance app were reported from some areas but they were removed within a day or two. Salaries may be unpaid because of budgetary issues.

S N Nema Joint Director, Directorate of Public Instruction