The coronavirus pandemic has stalled the MTA’s initiatives to reduce time beyond regulation fraud after the crisis put significant-tech time clocks into quarantine, the agency’s watchdog explained Monday.

Inspector Basic Carolyn Pokorny’s business office stated in a new report it was “concerned” with a hold off in integrating fingerprint-scanning gizmos that ended up billed as a resolve to combat allegations of widespread time beyond regulation abuse.

Transit officials in mid-March resolved to shut down the new Kronos timekeeping system in an energy to battle the spread of COVID-19.

But this caused a “significant, detrimental affect on the standardization of timekeeping employing Kronos and its integration with existing payroll techniques,” in accordance to the IG’s most recent critique of the MTA’s OT-reduction attempts.

“The hold off of this significant facet of the overtime reform effort and hard work is regarding to the OIG,” ongoing the report. “We query how very long it will previous and what options exist to be certain the hard work proceeds to move ahead.”

The MTA’s rollout of the new clocks — which are meant to substitute antiquated paper playing cards — has already been fraught with delays.

Just after initially promising to have the whole 40,000-individual workforce employing the clocks by this past September, only about 85 percent of these employees were being actively using the tech by mid-January.

More complicating matters, the MTA faced “apparent acts of vandalism” in opposition to the machines, the IG’s office has beforehand reported — with lots of found smashed or destroyed.

Agency IT staffers had projected that Kronos would be completely merged with present timekeeping techniques by the finish of 2021.

When the virus began wreaking havoc on New York City, staffers had been compelled to redirect their time and methods in the direction of supporting staff working from home — also most likely delaying the goal for complete Kronos payroll integration.

Pokorny commenced investigating allegations of overtime abuse at the MTA pursuing a series of Publish exposés on LIRR staff pulling in large paychecks, including a single staffer who raked in $344,147 in extra time — on top of his $117,499 income.

Pokorny’s business has accused the agency of enabling workers to rack up OT dependent on an “honor system” with tiny oversight or verification.

The MTA put in $1.3 billion on extra time very last year, in accordance to agency paperwork — up from $895 million in 2014.

In comparison to past year, the agency — which is facing a projected $4 billion deficit owing to the pandemic — has slice its OT tab by 24 %, the IG’s office environment stated.

But the cuts “were not pushed by things the MTA can depend on to develop savings in the long run.”

“Health considerations, turnover, and common uncertainty about whether or not technologies investments will continue being a priority threaten the completion of these advancements,” the IG’s workplace stated.