Kharagpur, Jan. 30: Municipal employees in this IIT town are under tech surveillance. Hidden eyes are keeping watch and shirkers beware.

For once, the civic authorities have undertaken a clean-up within their own precincts and installed closed-circuit cameras in all departments ? licence, conservancy, birth and death registration, public works, planning and reception for example.

The mission does not begin and end there. The 150-odd employees of the civic body have been issued swipe cards so that their arrival and departure can be monitored.

“We have introduced these systems over the past couple of months and have received very good results. Our performance has improved and complaints about non-cooperation of employees have gone down,” said Rabi Shankar Pandey, the Congress chairman of Kharagpur municipality.

“Seatey nei” (not in his seat) is the common refrain of co-workers when a government employee is found missing during duty hours. The average citizen is not supposed to know beyond that. The bosses, however, would now be able to identify the culprits.

Municipal affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya is all praise for the initiative. “I have not heard of any civic body having a network of cameras? not even Calcutta Municipal Corporation. I will visit the municipality to have a look at the system,” he said.

The monitoring, Pandey said, was essential. “From my office I could not ensure that employees of each and every department were working.”

The employees, he added, have welcomed the drive. “We have made them realise how important it is to improve our image in the tax payers’ eyes,” the chairman said.

On a monitor in his office, Pandey now watches the goi- ngs on in various departments. With the help of a remote-controlled device he can switch over to any department.

“I can find out how our employees are behaving with a tax payer when he arrives at the reception counter with queries. Suppose a man wants to obtain a birth certificate: we can monitor the entire process from the time he picks up the form to the time he submits it making the required payment at the cash counter. We can find out if the man has been intercepted by a tout or whether he is being harassed by any of our employees.”

There is also a camera fitted over the door to the chairman’s office ? he can check whether a person wanting to visit him is being stopped unnecessarily. Pandey said: “If I find a person is having to wait in front of a desk for a long time or stacks of files are not being cleared or if a chair is vacant, I immediately call for an explanation.”