Penza, 10 September 2015. PenzaNews. All schools of Penza city will switch over to cashless payment system for school mess halls by January 1, 2017, the head of the Penza city Education Department Yuri Golodyaev announced during his report at the September 10 session of the permanent City Duma committee on education, healthcare, science, culture and social issues.

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The relevant officials already created a roadmap for the process, he said.

“Almost all of them will start using this system this teaching season,” Yuri Golodyaev pointed out.

Seven more educational institutions joined the project on September 1 after “testing all mechanisms, installing all software,” he noted.

Later on, eight more schools will join the process in October, and a total of 35 will switch over to the new system by the end of the year, added the head of the Education Department.

“The main benefit for the cashless system is the fact that the homeroom teachers will no longer have to do work irrelevant to their profession – gathering cash to give away to subcontractors,” Yuri Golodyaev stressed.

He also reminded the officials that the cashless system have undergone a two-year testing period in Penza and was successfully implemented with due attention to local circumstances thanks to the positive experience of other cities.

“11 schools achieved a success in switching over to the project. We got what we had sought –made the school ATMs where pupils or their parents can deposit money always operational, rectified issues with the payment cards and Internet access, added a feature to send reports to parents,” the official explained.