New Mangalore Port employs biometric attendance

Mangalore: New Mangalore Port Trust (NMPT) has introduced biometric attendance system to the registered cargo-handling workers at the port.

A press release by Mr P. Tamilvanan, Chairman, NMPT, said here on Friday that this has brought in total computerised environment in labour booking for the first time in major ports. The biometric attendance system to the registered cargo-handling workers was introduced on December 1.

The workers are issued `proximate cards' to access the identity, and they will have to use one of the fingers at the scanner to register their attendance. Each attendance entry takes three to four seconds. There are three such scanners to register the attendance of 239 workers in each shift.

'We have more such IT plans for implementation at NMPT,' Mr Tamilvanan said.

After discussions with the unions a few months ago, the NMPT has successfully implemented computerised gang allotment system to create transparency and to speed up the process, the release added.