Bauchi: Education Ministry Introduces Device to Check Truancy, Absenteeism

In a bid to check truancy and absenteeism among teachers in the state, Bauchi State Commissioner of Education, Dr. Aliyu Tilde, has disclosed that the State Government have introduced fingerprint devices that will capture workers’ daily attendance.

Addressing reporters in his office in Bauchi today, Dr Aliyu noted that the devices would end truancy and absenteeism among teachers in the state and expose ghost workers.

The Commissioner lamented that before his appointment, a larger percentage of the workers used to abdicate their responsibilities.

“We now have the device in all the 219 secondary schools under the ministry. We have had a case of a teacher who only came to school seven times in eleven years. When I came in, I requested attendance registers of various schools and the statistics there was not encouraging at all: 53.5 percent of them (teachers) do not go to their work place at all,” he said.

“People are now less honest than before and given their large number, many of them can hide, a lot of them are in the rural areas where it is difficult to reach them for monitoring and evaluation. You find out that by the time you take up their attendance book, everyone is present and resumed work before 8:am even if he or she wasn’t there,” he added.

He added that it was very difficult to monitor workers without the introduction of technology.