In a major initiative to check arbitrary admissions in the name of skill development and to improve the quality of training, the Skill Development Mission has introduced Aadhaar-based biometric attendance to weed out anomalies such as bogus and inflated enrolment.

“The Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system is utilised for marking real time attendance of the enrolled candidate and carry out the registration procedure efficiently,” Skill Development Mission Director Andra Vamsi said.

He said, “As part of an organisation, we have to ensure prevention of absenteeism, which unfortunately has been very high. So, we have introduced Aadhaar-enabled biometric centres to help prevent absenteeism at skill development centres.”

He further said that out of three lakh candidates enrolled in the Skill Development Mission for the financial year 2021-22, only about 1.5 attended the courses and the rest 1.5 lakh were in the training pipeline.

The Skill Development Mission, through its district project management units, successfully conducted the mobilisation drive to pool up these absentees. But, the noteworthy point is that financial payments are subject to the visibility of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance of the candidates, which makes it easy for the Mission to impart qualitative training.

According to Andra Vamsi, the skill centres registered a large number of candidates but failed to mobilise them for training. This may further inflate payments without the actual work being reflected. Hence Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) turned out to be an excellent reform for timely payments on the basis of physical attendance.

However, with the launch of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance, the Skill Development Mission stopped payment of those skill centres that failed to physically present their trainees.

Private skill training centres are being paid Rs 30-50 per candidate, per hour for a minimum of 300 hours. By curbing such practices, the government has succeeded in saving at least Rs 9,000 per student.

The Uttar Pradesh government has intensified its drive to promote the use of technology in different departments to curb departmental pilferages and maintain transparency. The increasing use of technology in government functioning has been a game changer so far as eliminating corruption and ensuring transparency are concerned.