More districts join LEAP programme

THE Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is to be expanded to cover 33 more districts to bring the total number of beneficiary districts to 54.
With the expansion, 10,600 households would now benefit from the programme and the disbursement of funds is expected in a couple of weeks.
The government has so far expended approximately GH¢153,822 on the 21 initial districts that benefited from the LEAP since its inception in March, this year.
According to the LEAP Co-ordinator, Mr Lawrence Ofori-Addo, 20 districts that were hard hit by floods last year will benefit from a food emergency support programme to be supported by the World Bank over a seven-month period.
He told the Daily Graphic that under that support, a cash transfer of GH¢15 would be dolled out to beneficiaries in those districts to save them from going into “social destitution” after which it would be determined whether to continue with the support or place them under the regular LEAP income, depending on their condition.
Mr Ofori-Addo said officials of the Department of International Development (DFID), United Kingdom, were supporting the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment and the Department of Social Welfare, by building the capacity of LEAP to ensure its sustainability, as well as other social protection mechanisms of the ministry.
He added that the Ministry of Health was using information based on the extremely poor households to pay the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) premiums for the beneficiary households as part of the LEAP conditionalities.
Under the conditionalities, beneficiary households are required to enrol and retain all children of school age in public schools, register all members of the household under the NHIS, register new-born babies from 0-18 months old, attend post natal clinics to complete the expanded programme on immunisation and ensure that no child in the household is trafficked or engaged in any activities constituting the worse forms of child labour.
Mr Afori-Addo said reports from the various community LEAP implementing committees and the district social welfare officers pointed to the fact that majority of the households were complying with those conditionalities and added that the next cash transfer would be dedicated towards providing better nutrition to children in the beneficiary households to improve their nutritional status.
The LEAP transfers range from GH¢8 to GH¢15 depending on the number of eligible persons in the households and the social grants are paid every two months through recognised paid agencies in the beneficiary districts.
Beneficiaries of the LEAP are households with orphaned and vulnerable children who are taken care of by a caregiver, extremely poor people above 65 years of age and persons with severe disabilities who have no productive capacity.