[ 2016-11-24 ]

LEAP benefiting 213,000 households – Minister
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social
Protection, says more than 213,000 households in
all the 216 districts are currently benefiting
from the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty
(LEAP) programme.

The sector Minister, Nana Oye Lithur, said all the
213,000 beneficiaries under the programme which
was one of the country’s five flagship poverty
alleviation programmes under Ministry, had also
been registered on the National Health Insurance
Scheme (NHIS) free of charge.

She said other social interventions such as the
Labour Intensive Public Works (LIPW), NHIS, Basic
School Capitation Grant and the Ghana School
Feeding programmes, were all doing well.

The Minister, who could not hide her excitement
about the successes and increase in the coverage
from 1,654 beneficiaries in 21 districts to the
213,000 in 216 districts when the programme
commenced in March 2008, said the LEAP grants were
improving social inclusion for poor households,
allowing them to re-establish social ties and
fully participate in community, economic,
religious and social lives.

Nana Oye was speaking at the Second Social
Protection Dialogue (SPD) series in Accra to
disseminate impact evaluation and assessment on
the LEAP and the Labour Intensive Public Works
programmes.

She said the improvement in the LEAP could be
attributed to actions taken by the Ministry to
remedy earlier challenges in programme
implementation.

She said the Minister had used findings from two
main evaluations; the LEAP 1000, a support
programme for children in their first 1000 days of
life, and the Impact Evaluation, to make important
pragmatic decisions like the regularisation of
payments and increase the cash transfer amount to
deepen impacts for programme beneficiaries.

Nana Oye Lithur said the programme, which started
as a pilot, had since 2008 provided cash payments
to extremely poor households with orphans and
vulnerable children, the elderly without
productive capacity, persons with acute disability
and recently expanded to cover pregnant women and
children under 12 months.

Currently, beneficiaries receive between GH¢64.00
and GH¢100.00 every other month through cash
transfers using E-Zwich cards, and this
achievement has been graded A+ by the British
Department for International Development (DFID).

The programme, Nana Oye Lithur said, has over the
last eight years expanded nationwide with a more
refined targeting mechanism which had proven to be
effective for the LEAP 1000, as the Ministry makes
stringent efforts to include an additional 50,000
households in the second phase.

“LEAP is now functioning much more effectively,
supported by a robust M&E system,” she said.

Nana Oye Lithur said preliminary calculations from
the 2016 end-line evaluation showed an
appreciation in the monthly spending of LEAP
households from GHC 112 per month per adult to GHC
187 which was an increase of 67 percent between
2010 and now, and it had also recorded an
impressive reduction in school absences.

She said the LEAP had also supported households in
improving productivity both in agriculture and
non-farm activities.

However, although there was a strong link between
LEAP and NHIS, it does not appear to be
translating into improved health outcomes or
increased use of health for households and called
for the doubling of efforts to link beneficiaries
to access services such as child growth monitoring
and nutrition counselling.

Dr Isaac Osei-Akoto and Dr Simon Bawakyillenuo,
both researchers at the Institute of Statistics,
Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the
University of Ghana, took turns to explain the
progress and impact of the LIPW, which engages
people for public works by promoting the use and
management of available human and material
resources for the construction and maintenance of
infrastructure.

They said the LIPW, which had 88.7 per cent
beneficiaries, had the potential of causing
seasonal migration in the communities where
recipients used their incomes to purchase farm
inputs and household consumables.

Madam Susan Namondo Ngongi, the Country
Representative of UNICEF, and Ms Kathleen Beegle,
the Programme Leader in Charge of Human
Development at the World Bank, expressed their
satisfaction with the progress of the LEAP and
LIPW towards addressing poverty reduction,
unemployment and rural-urban migration.

Dr Grace Badiako, a Commissioner at the National
Development Planning Commission, urged the Gender
Ministry to ensure long-term planning and proper
co-ordination to ensure the sustainability of the
programme.

Source - GNA

... go Back