Hyderabad: The Telangana government is set to introduce Aadhaar based facial attendance system for the medical staff including the personnel in PHCs, UPHCs, Basti Dawakhanas and medical colleges in the State from May 1. The medical and health department personnel who do not follow the discipline will have to face loss of pay.

The government has mandated that the staff from the Primary Health Centres, Urban Primary Health Centres and Basti Dawakhanas should be in the duty from 9 am to 4 pm. The doctors and teaching doctors who do not follow the time discipline will have to face pay cuts. Director of Public Health B Ravinder Nayak said that there are 638 PHCs, 248 UPHCs and 468 Basti Davakhanas in the State. The aim of the government is to provide better treatment to the poor and middle class sections. The doctors should come to the hospitals in time and register the facial based biometric attendance. The para-medical staff and other personnel should also be in their duties on time. They should be available on time for giving services to provide better treatment, said Dr Ravinder Nayak, adding salaries will be decided based on the attendance.

The decision comes after the National Medical Council (NMC) directed the government to implement the app based facial attendance in hospitals and medical colleges. Recently, the Health Minister C Damodar Raja Narsimha had visited the Gandhi Hospital and was unhappy with many doctors not seen in the hospital. He had asked the superintendent to issue show cause notice to the doctors who were absent. The Minister wanted the officials to ensure a system in place to check the attendance of the staff.

The doctors would have to enrol their name, institution name, district name and Aadhaar details in the mobile application. There would be regular monitoring of the attendance with surprise inspections.

There are 34 government medical colleges and 28 private medical colleges in the State and the rule would be for all. Besides facial recognition, there would be geo tagging to check the moments of the doctors and faculty in the institutions, the officials said.