Bauchi introduces digital attendance system to weed ghost teachers

Dr. Aliyu Tilde, Bauchi State Commissioner of Education, has said that the State Government has introduced fingerprint devices that will capture workers’ daily attendance. He said that using the devices will help in checking truancy and absenteeism among teachers in primary and secondary schools and eliminate ghost workers in the State.

Tilde lamented that before his appointment as Commissioner, about 53.5 per cent of workers shun their duty posts, thereby, affecting the State’s educational sector.He said, “We now have the device in all the 219 secondary schools under the ministry. We have had a case of a teacher who only came to school seven times in eleven years. When I came in, I requested for attendance register of various schools and the statistics there was not encouraging at all; 53.5 per cent of them (teachers) do not go their work place at all.

“People are now less honest than before and given their large number, many of them can hide, a lot of them are in the rural areas where it is difficult to reach them for monitoring and evaluation. You find out that by the time you take up their attendance book, everyone is present and resumed work before 8:am even if he or she wasn’t there.

“It is very difficult to monitor this large number of workers, the best thing is to introduce technology. With this, you will be able to capture all the teachers within your purview; if anyone goes in, delivers a lesson or checks out, it will be recorded in the device.The Commissioner said there would be cut-off mark for attendance and any worker below the mark would not receive the salary for the month.He added that genuine cases of absenteeism must be reported in accordance with established procedures.