‘No more ghost employees in Valenzuela’

While other officials are tight-lipped or in denial, Valenzuela City officials talk openly about ghost employees at City Hall.

Valenzuela City Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian yesterday said the days of ghost employees are over.

"They are gone. Only in Valenzuela. We are proud to claim we have no more ghost employees. We invested in technology precisely to eliminate them. We know exactly the times our employees put in work," said Gatchalian.

The mayor said he has been making full use of biometrics, via finger-scanning machines, in checking and monitoring attendance of city hall workers.

The machines were put to use officially after a three-month test-run that began in September last year.

Gatchalian said the installation of the employee monitoring system was part of his "10-point Agenda for Development" to transform the city’s employees into world-class civil servants — "efficient, effective and highly motivated for public services."

The use of biometrics to eliminate the anomaly was an idea initiated by the Boston University-educated Gatchalian.

The new time-recording machines accurately and effectively replaces the cumbersome and easily manipulated daily time records (DTRs) by employees timing in and out of office. The old method, for the longest time, was seen as an opportunity to cheat on work time by city hall personnel and pad the pockets of unscrupulous officials.

"The machines virtually terminated the ’15-30’ employees. No one can punch in or out for anyone anymore as they used to. With the employees putting in as much work as they should, their productivity has significantly increased and has resulted in nothing less than better public service," said Gatchalian.

James de Guzman of the City Hall Information Technology Office, in describing how the system works, said the City Hall has five terminals, three of which are at the main building, and one each are in the annex and the City Action Center.

The employee swipes his or her city hall identification card in a slot of the terminal and puts an index finger on top of a sensor. The data on the card and the fingerprint are automatically matched, establishing the employee’s identity.

De Guzman told The STAR that the terminals are automatically connected online to the Human Resources Management Office (HRMO) particularly to the Timekeeping and Payroll Sections. He said it works in such a way that even if it was offline at the HRMO, particularly after office hours, the machine continues to function, storing data for retrieval later when the HRMO comes online again.

"Cheating, particularly the notorious system of punching (the time records) by proxy, is nil," said de Guzman.

Gatchalian has issued a stern warning for those thinking how to beat the new system.

"Do not even think about it," he warned.

He said a random or spot checking system has been implemented to check this, admitting at the same time that the "human factor" is still something to contend with in spite of the new state-of-the-art contraptions. — Jerry Botial