The World Bank Group, Marie Stopes International Ghana and PharmAccess Foundation International have donated items worth $200,000 to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to help do away with manual data collection.

The items would assist the Ministry in its data collection process of extremely poor people under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) and currently the Ghana National Households Registry database initiative.

The items include 100 Personal Assistance Device (Android tablets) with solar chargers, power banks, digitalized proxy means test tools on the link, Cloud-based PMT data management and monitoring system.

The others are two Android Samsung tablet 4 with both links mounted for the Minister and Chief Director; Mounted Led screen and central processing unit that permanently display data from repository to inform the Minister on the progress of work in real time.

Others are ten motorbikes for District Social Protection Officers to use in monitoring field activities.

Dr Nicole Klingen, World Bank Practice Manager, who presented the items on behalf of the team, said the donation was to assist the Gender Ministry to implement the Africa Health Markets for Equity project (AHME).

Dr Klingen said the AHME objective is to advance social protection of the extreme poor, which aligns with the twin goals of the World Bank of eliminating poverty and advancing shared growth.

She said the items would help with the collection of data in a more convenient way and do away with the delay and long process of collecting data manually.

She said social protection was very important since it helped in ending poverty and making sure all were well protected.

“If the Ministry is able to achieve their 250,000 target as far as social protection is concerned, this would move the country forward greatly,” Dr Klingen stated.

Dr Klingen congratulated the Minister for the initiative saying “take pride with what you have done in the sector but accept the challenges that comes with it”.

Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, expressed gratitude to the World Bank and its associate partners for providing the Ministry with the necessary logistics and technical support to improve social protection systems in the country.

She said the Government appreciated the World Bank Group’s support to reach out to the extremely poor and vulnerable in the society.

Nana Oye Lithur said the AHME project is expected to add 150,000 households, 900,000 persons and 70,000 extremely poor people onto the national household data registry by June 2016.