Attendace Record Of Contract Employees

We have contact labours in our organization. can we register there thumb impression to record there attendance. What I heard is under contract labour act, principal employer can not keep attendance record of contract labour.

Dear Friend,
Its not about that "can not Keep" attendance register rather its the duty of the contractor to maintain the muster roll for his workmen.
In practice,you must maintain the attendance register with you so that you can eradicate the chances of any ambiguity creeping in attendance matters and subsequently effecting the billing matters.
You can keep it manually or can even systematized the same but ensure that your contractors maintains the muster roll for its workmen deployed at your organization and periodically you collect the document from the contractor.

Hi,
I agree to what Arnab Dasgupta said. It is to reduce the chances of error your contractor might make. You can verify the mustor role maintained by him with the attendance register of yours - manually or via software. This would cross verify the attendance entries and avoid wrong billing.
Regards,
Hiral

Dear Swapnil,
We are a company engaged in business of "Contract Staffing" services that we provide on pan india basis.
We shall be obliged if you consider us for an association with your organization for the said scope of services.

Dear Swapnil
As a matter of fact, if the contractor is not maintaining the attendance register, it is the principal employer who has to maintain the Muster roll, Payment Register & OT Register of all the workers engaged in an organisation.
So you can implement the Biometric attendance system in your organisation even for the contract workmen, so that you can directly download the Muster roll, Payment Register and OT Register directly from the system and even you can make the bill payment for the contractor as per the records available.

Dear Swapnil et al, The notion that Principal Employer shall not keep attendance of the contract labour is too naive a view even from the Contract Labour Act point of view. By keeping attendance of the contract labourers, a contract with a contractor will not be rendered sham, the key tests are many others. The requirement under the Factories Act is that the factories keep a record of all those who work there. So if you are keeping a bio-metric record of all present in the factory, it will help you in ensuring compliances under various acts like PF, ESI etc.
KK

Dear All,

Thanks for the guidance. but we have some employees on contract basis. where contractor is submitting bill every month, and our directors wants to there attendance from bio matric machine, but what I heard from other HR peers that we should not keep their attendance recors in bio matric. I checked in Contract labour act and its says.

(2) In respect of establishments not covered under sub-rule (1) the following provisions shall apply, namely:-

(a) Every contractor shall maintain a register of muster roll cum wage-register in as prescribed by sub-rule (1) of rule 27 of Maharashtra Minimum Wages Rules, 1963.

(b) Every contractor shall issue wage slips as prescribed by sub-rule (2) of rule 27 of Maharashtra Minimum Wages Rules, 1963.;

(c) Signature or thumb-impression of every worker on the register of wages or wages-cum-muster roll as the case may be, shall be obtained and entries therein, shall be authenticated by the initials of the contractor or his representative and duly certified by the authorised representative of principal employer as required by rule 54;

Kindly guide me on the same.

Dear Swapnil,

Reference to my previous post in reply to yours,once again to sate that it is the primary responsibility of the contractor to maintain the muster roll of his workmen which is also a statutory compliance norm under CLRA,1970.

Now,as the pricipal employer,the law do not stops you to track the attendance of the workmen deployed by your contractor and even you may mechanized the same.

As desired by your directors,you may certainly go for biometric system as the attendance tracker,that shall also serve a security check at your premises.

I can share my experience with you that we,as a contractor, had deployed manpower with a global IT company and the attendance of our employees are tracked via bio metric access cards at the premises of our client.

The muster roll format shall give you the fact that whether any workmen was present on his/her duty on a specific date and it shall not have the in and out times that you can tract from the bio metric system.This shall help you to monitor that the working hours are properly utilized or not.

The only point that you need to ensure that your contractor maintains the muster roll for the attendance of the workmen as a statutory compliance norms.

Dear Mr. Swapnil
You can maintain the attendance of your contractor's employees in the same attendance biometric readers which you use for your regular employees. The service provider can make modifications accordingly so that you can generate reports etc., separately for regular and contract employees without any mix up. As a principal employer, you have every right to monitor the books and records of your contractor. In fact, you can allot an exclusive work place for your contractor(s) by allotting table space, computer etc., and may even charge a notional rent. But, do not explicitly involve in their hire, fire, leave, reward, punishment related matters. Please do get their monthly compliance report along with photo copies of PF, ESI, paid challans etc.,

It is safe for principal employer not to maintain the attendance of Contract employees It will give evidence of master&servant relationship between employee and principal employer.However he can adopt some discreet methods of attendance recordings to cross check contractors bills.Contractor or his employees should not get access to it.
Varghese Mathew
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