The project embarked on a 2-week long tour to all the project’s beneficiary 120 gardens where the officials assemble the bench weighing scales the project supplied the gardens in April.
To ensure proper utilization and longevity of these scales, a training of trainers (ToT) program was conducted for the agricultural engineering staff of the Department of Agriculture (DOA) and the TGSB metrology unit staff. The ToT covered topics such as assembly, operation, maintenance, and repair of the bench weighing scales.
The installation exercise, which took place from the 8th August to the 23rd August 2023, was facilitated by Abdoulie F. Njie, a metrologist at The Gambia Standards Bureau, who was trained by the project to deliver similar trainings.
In June, the project trains garden secretaries on the usage and maintenance of the scales.
These efforts are aimed at inculcating the culture of weighing and recording of produce in the gardens.
The WACOMP-GM National Horticulture Expert, Malamin Drammeh noted that the training of garden secretaries on the use of bench weighing scales will bring about improvements in the post-harvest handling of onions and allied vegetable products by promoting the culture of sorting, grading, weighing, packaging, labelling and storage.
By the end of the training, the trainees were able to understand how to operate the bench weighing scale to obtain an accurate record of weights and how to routinely take care of the scale.
