The attendance taking App National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) has been plagued with technical issues.
Workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have not been able to mark their attendance and therefore have not received salaries due to a technical hitch in the app that is used for the purpose. The National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app has been malfunctioning due to excess load on the server.
Prabhukumar, president of Karnataka State Karmika Hitarakshana Union, Kengeri said that the salaries of the people working under MGNREGA scheme have been delayed due to errors in marking their attendance.
Shri. Thyagraj, Assistant Director of Rural Development (MGNREGS) said, “As the number of workers under this scheme has been rising, especially after COVID-19, government has come up with digitalised real-time attendance recording and monitoring software. Through this app one monitoring person from amongst the workers clicks a photo of the workers and adds a geo-tag to the photo.” He added that this helps in directly recording the attendance of the worker and ensures transparency.
However, Dr. Suresh B R, professor of sociology from Bangalore University said, “Implementation of MGNREGA and the software associated with it becomes difficult when it comes to online based system.” The lack of accessibility and delay in the penetration of an issue through the hierarchical structure of a government organization further adds to the concerns of MGNREGA workers, he added.
The NMMS App is one such software that has been facing a few errors ever since it has been hastily launched in 2021, stated Tejas, State Project Manager (SPM) at the Rural Development Department of Karnataka.
He said, “Several people across the country are using NMMS App every day, this puts extreme load on the server, eventually making it difficult for the workers to mark their attendance. Another issue is restriction on the number of people; in a picture there must be only 10 people. In case there are around 1000 or more workers it becomes difficult as the number of pictures would increase to 100.”
He added that the number of people in a picture should be extended at least to 20-25 people.
One of the major issues is of lack of facilities and communication gap between the gram panchayat officers and the state officers. SPM Tejas said, “In some cases the mate—a worker who is assigned to check the work in workplace—does not have an android mobile with sufficient internet facilities to click the photo and record the attendance., In such cases the workers have to wait for longer hours until the issue is fixed.” He added that sometimes the workers often visit their work place around 6:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. to avoid working in the scorching sun during noon.
“However, as real-time attendance has been made compulsory, when any technical issues arise with NMMS app they have to wait until their attendance has been registered,” Tejas SPM said.
Suresh, sociology professor said that there needs to be a proper test-run of any software or app before it is launched by the government.
“The government should ensure that the application is streamlined before launching it, instead of working on it after receiving complaints regarding the glitches,” added SPM Tejas.
He added that there should be troubleshooting built in to the application so that people can get quick solutions to their issues. A semi-physical system can be followed instead of relying entirely on a digital system until internet facilities are accessible in the rural areas.
“These concerns are slowly being addressed by the government, several bugs have been removed from NMMS app,” SPM Tejas said.
