• They used masks to register attendance on behalf of their colleagues
• The incident sparked widespread controversy

Local reports in China revealed that employees in one of the neighborhood committees resorted to printing photos of their colleagues’ faces and turning them into masks, aiming to deceive attendance and sign-out systems that rely on facial recognition.

According to a local newspaper, a resident named “Li” filed a complaint against several workers in a neighborhood committee in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, eastern China, after discovering their use of masks to register attendance for others.

The whistleblower explained that the committee secretary led a group of employees in manipulating the system by printing their colleagues’ photos on paper and converting them into masks, allowing a single person to register attendance for multiple individuals.

Surveillance cameras installed above the fingerprint device documented these practices.

The number of people involved in the operation or how the whistleblower obtained the surveillance footage is unknown.

Neighborhood committees are the lowest form of urban civil administration in China; they are quasi-autonomous organizations that do not receive government salaries but are provided with allowances.

The news sparked a wave of anger on social media, with one commenter stating: “This is blatant corruption. They should be fired and legally held accountable. Many people struggle to find work.”

Another said: “Some of us work more than 10 hours a day, while there are those who don’t even complete eight hours.”

Meanwhile, some observers argued that enforcing a fingerprint system on neighborhood committee employees is illogical, as their work requires traveling and visiting homes rather than sitting in an office all day.

The whistleblower had submitted his complaint to higher authorities in October, but government agencies promised to respond before December 31.

The incident also raised questions about how printed photos could successfully deceive facial recognition systems.