No fee reimbursement without biometric attendance system

Nellore: Final warning has been sounded to all the degree colleges to implement Aadhaar linked biometric attendance system immediately to put an end to the misuse of fees reimbursement facility. The students as well as faculty have to mark their attendance in the biometric machines both in the morning and evening and the data is linked to a centralised server to prevent any tampering.

Such machines are being installed in hostels being run by government for undergraduate and PG students too and it being linked to e-pass system to pay scholarships and mess bills also in future. One of the major reasons for launching the programme is misuse of fee reimbursement in a big way by private colleges. It is an open secret that private colleges woo students eligible for tuition fee reimbursement to join in their institutions by offering '5,000 to '10,000 with an eye on the fees refund from the government. Some private institutions promise pass certificate also if the student enrol his name in the institute even if he/she does not attend the classes.

Though AP State Council of Higher Education has initiated measures to introduce the biometric process in December 2014, the implementation was in snail pace because of some objections raised by National Informatics Centre (NIC) over using their servers to upload details of private institutions. To overcome the problem, state government has developed a website vidyawaan.nic.in with an exclusive server at Vijayawada to upload the details of all the colleges for Aadhaar linked biometric attendance system.

District informatics officer of NIC, S. Subhramanya Sai said they have attended a workshop conducted by the District Coordinator of the programme Ms Sailaja, principal of D.K. Women’s College and cleared all the doubts. To speed up the process, APSCHE has directed all the Universities to cancel the affiliation and recognition to the colleges failing to fall in line before the end of this month. Confirming this registrar of Vikrama Simhapuri University Prof. P.R. Sivasankar said biometric attendance system has been installed in their University College and PG Centre already. He said all the private colleges also began registering their details in the website and the process is likely to be completed within a month.