No More Work From Home For Government Employees As COVID Cases Drop: What The New Order Says

In a sign of a return to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has resumed the biometric system for office attendance and stopped the system of 'work from home' for every employee of the Central government's ministries and departments.

In an office memorandum issued on February 16, the DoPT said while referring to the earlier office memorandum on January 31, 2022, "Since the period of suspension of biometric attendance is over on 15.02.2022, all the officers, officials working in this Department are required to mark their attendance in the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance Control System (AEBAS) with effect from February 16, 2022.

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What the order says

The latest order also said that while marking their attendance in AEBAS, all officers, officials will follow the preventive measures to contain the spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Soon after the spread of Covid-19 during the third phase this year, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension had issued a direction to all the Central Ministries and Departments to reduce the office attendance by 50 per cent.

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The officers and staff to ensure strict compliance of Covid-appropriate behaviour like frequent washing of hands, sanitisation, wearing face mask, face cover and observing social distancing all the time.

Earlier, the pregnant women employees and Divyang employees were exempted from attending offices while the physical attendance of the government servants below the level of Under Secretary was restricted to 50 per cent of the actual strength and the remaining 50 per cent was working from home with the instruction that those working from home would remain available on telephone and other electronic means of communications at all times.

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This comes as the third wave of COVID-19 in India continues to subside and cases dropping in all states.

As the situation continues to improve, many private companies have also cautiously resumed offices and have called employees back.

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However, many, especially those who had gone back to their native places from the big cities are yet to return and are resisting calls to resume working from offices.

Health experts have also cautioned against rushing back to pre-COVID-19 ways and warned that another wave of the pandemic cannot be ruled out.

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