Omicron: AAI Employees’ Union wants Bio-Metric Attendance to be suspended

New Delhi: On account of rising COVID-19 variant Omicron cases in India, the Airports Authority of India employees' union has written to the management demanding suspension of their Bio-Metric attendance system. The two demands mentioned in the letter written by Union's General Secretary Ghanshyam Singh to the AAI management are immediate withdrawal of Bio-Metric Attendance system and cancellation of all sports events (cricket/tracking scheduled in the month of January and February 2022. 

"As we all are aware that COVID-19 and Omicron cases have started increasing day by day in the last 10-15 days. If the report appeared in Times of India is to be believed, in the last 24 hours 6358 Omicron COVID-19 cases have been registered in India and also the tally of Omicron has reached 653. It is an alarming situation and considering the consequences of a sudden rise in the case of COVID-19 as well as Omicron, the Government of India is in action on taking all preventive steps and measures to ensure that there is no community spread of this virus once again", Singh wrote in the letter.

"It is submitted that AAI management should also take all sincere steps to ensure that their employees and family members are safe and secured. As a precautionary measure, Bio-Metric Attendance should be immediately stopped till the situation/cases of COVID-19 comes to its normalcy, as has been taken in the past", the letter added.

Explaining the reason behind the union's demand Singh said that "due to Bio-Metric attendance the chances of contracting Corona Virus will be very high which in turn will only adversely hamper the financial condition of AAI". He also said that the medical expenses of AAI will shoot up on account of any employee getting contracted to Corona Virus.

Omicron India update

Omicron has started replacing the Delta variant in the country in terms of the number of COVID-19 cases and 80 per cent of the travellers who tested positive have this new variant, news agency PTI reported quoting official sources on Friday. However, a third of all the detected cases were mildly symptomatic, and the rest were asymptomatic, the officials have said.

A total of 1,270 Omicron cases have been detected across 23 States and UTs so far, according to the Union health ministry data updated on Friday.