To crack down on doctors posing as ghost faculty in medical colleges and ensure they do not indulge in private practice during working hours, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has initiated the process of implementing centralised “Online Faculty Attendance Monitoring System” (OFAMOS). The move, part of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s Digital Mission Mode Project (DMMP), aims at bringing in transparency and accountability of faculty attendance. It will be implemented from the coming academic year.
The MCI, which issued a circular in this regard on November 22, has directed deans and principals of all medical colleges in the country to ensure that the attendance of doctors is recorded through biometric fingerprint system twice a day.
Ghost faculty
So far, medical colleges (both government and private) have been arranging ghost faculty, who are not on the rolls, during the annual MCI inspections of colleges for recognition, approval and renewal.
MCI executive committee member H.N. Ravindra said there had been several complaints about many private medical colleges not having any real faculty in critical subjects, especially in postgraduate courses of super-specialised degrees.
Also, the MCI has noted that some doctors indulge in private practice during working hours. “Based on the complaints, the MCI set up a committee that recommended a centralised Aadhaar-linked attendance system to ensure quality medical education,” he said.
While the issue of ghost faculty was high in private medical colleges, doctors indulging in private practice is more rampant in government medical colleges across the country, he said.
The MCI has mandated installation of biometric fingerprint attendance machines to capture faculty attendance using OFAMOS on the college premises. Each college will have multiple machines to facilitate easy access to the faculty, the circular stated.
