The government is planning to introduce a mobile tracking system for about 15,000 government college teachers across the country to curb evasion of duty during working hours.
Sources in the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (DSHE) said they were working on the plan to prevent negligence of work by teachers. The directorate has been receiving complaints that many teachers remain absent during work hours in connivance with principals.
The sources said mobile tracking would be done using a 15-digit code, known as the IMEI number of the mobile set. Besides the mobile device, the biometric attendance system, too, would be used to double check the teachers’ presence at educational institutions, they added.
The sources also said the tracking system would be first introduced for college principals and later extended to cover other teachers of 327 government colleges across the country.
This network would also include college monitoring officers because of allegations that many of them do not visit the colleges and submit fictitious reports.
“We'll introduce the system for tracking teachers. We're actively working on it. We've already got proposals from two mobile companies—Teletalk and Banglalink—which would help us in this regard,” DSHE director (secondary) Prof. Md Elias Hossain told The Independent on Wednesday.
“This will help us to monitor the movement of teachers during office hours. We'll do it on a random basis. Action will be taken against teachers found to be absent without submitting a prior leave application,” he said.
Asked if such monitoring would extend beyond working hours, Hossain said: “It'll only be used during office hours. We've received a
large number of complaints that many teachers remain absent from educational institutions during office
hours on personal errands.”
“At first, such tracking would be introduced for college principals. As they are the heads of educational institutions, they should be made accountable first,” he added.
DSHE Director General Prof. SM Wahiduzzaman told The Independent: “We're trying to introduce such a system to trace teachers during work
hours to ensure transparency and accountability.”
“Teachers are the most respected persons in the society. But it hurts us when we get complaints that many of them remain absent during work hours. Their evasion of duty hampers the discipline of the institutions and deprives students of education,” he said.
Sources said such stern measures are being taken because of a downtrend in the results of government college students over the last few years. The authorities suspect the slide is due the lacklustre attitude shown by teachers.
However, some teachers, preferring anonymity, said that though a few of their colleagues may play truant, such mobile tracking for all would not be desirable as it would infringe on privacy.
“Every teacher is obliged to work. Sometimes, a teacher leaves the institution after completing his or her classes and with the principal’s permission. But such mobile tracking would certainly be resented by a few who evade work,” Mujahid Billah Faruqui, principal of Govt Ashek Mahmud College, Jamalpur, told The Independent.