The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad, has made it compulsory for all faculty members employed in its 300 affiliated engineering colleges in and nearby the city to denote their attendance using a biometric machine. This will be implemented in this academic year.
This step has been taken to inspect colleges from misleading the university officials and the AICTE regarding the number of faculty members in their corresponding colleges. It has been identified that nearly 120 engineering colleges, present in and around the city, are understaffed and are deceiving about their faculty strength to escape encountering action from the JNTU and the AICTE.
The university will fix the biometric machines in all the colleges and check the attendance of the staff using a server in the university. The biometric attendance system is already being experimented on a trial basis in two colleges present at Ibrahimpatnam and near Medchel.
Officials say this is being implemented to make sure that colleges have sufficient number of teachers. Apart from this, to ensure the number of staff intimated is genuine, JNTU has asked the colleges to pay salaries to their teaching staff using cheques or bank account transfers rather than paying in cash.