Monday blues are a cliché in central government now. After the Narnedra Modi government’s directive and host of measures to ensure a different work culture, there seems to be remarkable improvement, at least in staff attendance. There are about 48 lakh central government employees working across the country.

Today (Monday) nearly a quarter (24.5%) of central government employees (registered on www.attendance.gov.i) had come to office before 9 am. More than 34% staff was in office by 9.30 am. This is definitely a change in Delhi’s babus, who used to walk into office at leisure.
 
However, keeping the pressure on its army of workers, the centre on Monday has warned all its employees to come in time to offices. Any kind of failure will attract disciplinary action, says the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
The DoPT has written to central government ministries to ensure punctuality in government offices."Habitual late attendance is viewed as conduct unbecoming of a government servant and disciplinary action may be taken against such a government servant. It is also added that punctuality in attendance is to be observed by government servants at all levels," the DoPT said in its fresh order.

Service rules stipulates that every government servant shall at all times maintain devotion to duty, it said.
 
The DoPT order said instructions have been issued from time to time with regard to the need to observe punctuality by government servants. "Responsibility for ensuring punctuality in respect of their employees rests within ministries, departments or offices," it said.

The Centre has also introduced Aadhaar-enabled enabled Bio-metric Attendance System (AEBAS) in central government offices to replace the manual system of marking of attendance. The AEBAS system to ensure punctuality is to be implemented in all ministries and departments, the DoPT said.

The ministries have been asked to ensure that all employees mark their attendance through the biometric system and take action against habitual offenders.

A website - www.attendance.gov.in - has also been made functional to give details of registered employees and those present in the offices on daily basis. There were 1,29,895 registered employees of which 62,761 were present on Monday, according to the website.

As per existing instructions, half-a-day's casual leave should be debited for each day of late attendance, but late attendance upto an hour, on not more than two occasions in a month, and for justifiable reasons may be condoned by the competent authority.