KUWAIT CITY, June 15: Complaints among many teachers in various educational districts escalated recently due to problems in the fingerprinting system, particularly the impact of these problems on their annual performance evaluation and the calculation of salary deductions. This comes amid widespread calls by the educational community for the Ministry of Education to intervene quickly and ensure justice for the teaching staff. Several teachers have reported that many official activities, especially during the recent period, were not included in the electronic employee record system, so they were considered absent or late. They pointed out that this negatively affected their job performance rating, which resulted in absences and unjustified salary deductions.

One of the affected teachers stated that he was assigned to conduct a weekly workshop, but the assignment was not entered into the system, resulting in a salary deduction and him being marked absent from work. He stated, “When I checked with the Administrative Affairs Sector, I was told it is not possible to enter old dates. Should I be held responsible for a technical or administrative error for which I had no control?” In the same manner, a number of educators expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of acceptance of justifications for forgetting attendance fingerprints, even if they were documented in official letters or work costs issued by school administrations or educational districts.

Sources confirmed that such problems, if not addressed fairly, will affect the entire work mechanism and demotivate the educational environment. They pointed out that the school year has ended, and that it is illogical for a teacher to be surprised by a low performance rating due to a glitch in the attendance system. They called on the ministry to review the job performance ratings affected by fingerprint issues and un-entered activities, allow the exceptional entry of previous data to address errors, form a committee to receive and adjudicate complaints fairly and expeditiously in each educational district, improve the mechanism for linking activities and fingerprints, and develop the electronic system to prevent the recurrence of these errors.

By Abdulrahman Al-Shammari
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff