Government asks ministries to upload holidays, working and public dealing hours on respective websites

NEW DELHI: After making biometric attendance compulsory for all central government employees to ensure punctuality, the government has now asked all ministries to display on their websites their working hours, mention the time when they are open for public dealing as well as a list of public holidays.

The Department of Personnel and Training ( DoPT) said in an official memorandum on Wednesday that this was being done to make the general public and stake-holders concerned aware of the office timing in government offices.

“The matter regarding posting/uploading of ‘working hours’ on the websites of Indian government has been considered in this department in order to provide information to the citizens staying/residing abroad who seek Indian government websites,” the DoPT said in the memorandum sent to all ministries and constitutional bodies.

It added all ministries are hence advised to upload their working hours, holidays list and public dealing hours on their websites. Ministries are generally open from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.

An electronic biometric attendance system to keep track of punctuality of government officials has already been made operational as part of Modi government’s efforts to discipline employees. Attendance of over 50000 central government employees from 148 departments can be viewed online at present.

A website created for the purpose, attendance.gov.in, is hooked up to computers in government offices that identifies staff through their fingerprint and Aadhaar number and displays real-time chart of how many people are at work at a time.