Raphael John-Lall

?A fin­ger­print­ing-recog­ni­tion sys­tem for em­ploy­ees to en­ter the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs on Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain has been put on hold af­ter com­plaints by staff.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Emer­son Mar­tin, dur­ing a phone in­ter­view. "We can't agree with this sys­tem of fin­ger­print­ing. It in­fringes on peo­ple's iden­ti­ty. We con­sid­er that sys­tem il­le­gal," he said. Mar­tin said the Min­istry of Sport start­ed to test-run the fin­ger­print­ing sys­tem on Mon­day with­out con­sult­ing the staff and the PSA. He added that the sys­tem was sup­posed to re­place the sign­ing in by pub­lic of­fi­cers.

"This vi­o­lates the terms and con­di­tions of the col­lec­tive agree­ment...Al­though, we know that it is law that pub­lic ser­vants must sign in when they come to work," he said. Mar­tin said that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this sys­tem has caused fear among staff mem­bers. "This caused pan­ic among the staff," he said. He said the staff of the Min­istry of Sport would have pre­ferred oth­ers op­tions like us­ing a swipe card sys­tem. Mar­tin said union rep­re­sen­ta­tives met yes­ter­day with act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ash­win Creed, who as­sured them that the sys­tem would be put on hold.

"The act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary told us that it would be put on hold," Mar­tin said. "Word al­so got back to Min­is­ter of Sport Gary Hunt that the staff was un­hap­py with that new sys­tem," he said. Mar­tin said the next step would be that the union would write a let­ter to Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Mar­garet Far­ray who was sup­posed to re­turn to of­fice next week.