National Coordinator of the School Feeding Programme (SFP), Gertrude Quashigah, is attributing challenges facing the Programme to manual operations.
She said monitoring and evaluation of the Programme, a key activity involving data collection, was done manually.
Ms Quashigah said this when World Food Programme (WFP) presented 300 Samsung Digital Tablets to the SFP to monitor 260 schools, as part of its digitisation drive.
Some key features of the tablet; include a Tableau and ONA software that provide users with visual impairment to help them see and understand the data, and digitised questionnaires.
Training for 300 users of the tablet will commence on October 14, this year.
“Now we can heave a sigh of relief as we already see a light at the end of the tunnel. If digitising our monitoring system was a dream, now it is a reality, even though we are now on a pilot phase,’’ she said.
She said the equipment would help to streamline the day-to-day activities of the SFP, especially in terms of validating enrolment figures, flow of information and checking the performance of caterers.
The Coordinator said the tools would also help SFP to digitise its monitoring system to receive real time data and also tighten all loose ends at the local levels where the actual implementation of the programme occurred.
She appealed for support to digitise the entire School Feeding Programme in the future for the delivery of an effective home grown School Feeding Programme in the country.
Ms Quashigah commended the WFP for the continuous support since the inception of the Programme in 2005.
Deputy Country Director, WFP, Anna Mukiibi-Bunnya, said the essence of the donation was to enhance the digitisation of the school feeding monitoring system to improve efficiency and implementation.
She said the tablets would improve the monitoring and reporting capacity of the SFP as actual data on school attendance and feeding would be generated to enable payments reflect the numbers, while saving cost, which could be used to expand the Programme to reach more school children.
Ms Mukiibi-Bunnya, said her outfit had supported the formulation of the School Feeding Policy, training school feeding caterers across the country to cook innovative nutritious meals, and joint monitoring with stakeholders of the Programme among others.
GNA