Pakistan’s Sindh Province to Bring Biometric Attendance Tracking to Colleges

According to a report from the Pakistan Observer, the government of Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province has announced the introduction of a new biometric attendance tracking system to be implemented at all government colleges following continued reports of widespread absences in the region.

The new program, which is to be monitored from the office of the college department at the Sindh Secretariat, will make it mandatory for all teachers to track their own attendance and that of their students. This will be done using biometric attendance devices that had been previously installed in colleges in the province by the Sindh Education Department — 50 colleges in Karachi and 50 in other Sindh districts.

The move to the biometric system comes in anticipation of a higher-than-normal college enrollment period, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulted in all students receiving a passing grade, with more than 150,000 so far having been enrolled in colleges as a result.

According to Rashid Hussain Mahar, Sindh’s Director General of Colleges, the biometric attendance tracking devices will eventually be activated in a grand total of 335 colleges throughout the province.

The use of biometric attendance tracking has been growing in popularity in recent years, with neighboring India being pursuing the technology and in some cases tying it into its national Aadhaar program by Mantra Softech, which promoted its tech in a conference in Uttar Pradesh in early 2020.

Mantra’s Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) has been deployed at government schools in Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, while also having been adopted by the Medical Council of India, with the company’s Director Hiren Bhandari commenting at the time that “[the] AEBAS Solutions will uplift the education sector by bringing more transparency.”

Source: Pakistan Observer

–

February 15, 2022 — by Tony Bitzionis