LEAP beneficiaries to receive March, April grant
A total of 147,901 beneficiary households in 185 districts are expected to be paid their Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) grants covering March and April 2016.
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The payment, which begins from May 30 to June 3, 2016, is the 42nd payment of the programme.
This year, the LEAP programme will embark on an expansion exercise in an electronic data enumeration to enroll an additional 50,000 beneficiary households to bring the total to 250,000 by December 2016.
During the payment period, one eligible member household will receive GH¢64; two eligible member household, GH¢76; three eligible member household, GH¢88, and four or more eligible member household, GH¢106.
Payment
LEAP is the flagship social protection intervention introduced by the Government of Ghana to support the vulnerable and extremely poor households to meet their basic needs for survival.
All LEAP beneficiaries will be paid electronically nationwide, using the e-zwich platform of the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GhIPSS).
A statement from the LEAP Secretariat, under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said the E-payment system was aimed at improving cash transfers and making it a more robust and efficient payment system.
It said the system also engaged a second level biometric verification which authenticated the identity of LEAP beneficiaries, thereby avoiding the issue of intermediaries during payments.
According to the statement, officials of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, as well as the Department of Social Development and the LEAP Secretariat, would monitor the payments at the district and community levels during the period.
Complementary interventions
It said the LEAP programme had in-built complementary interventions, one of which was the linkage with the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) project being implemented under the Ghana Social Opportunity Project (GSOP).
The GSOP provides livelihood support through skills training in soap making, Kente and basket weaving, among others, for LEAP beneficiary household members who had the capacity to work.
The JSDF complementary service linkage with the LEAP programme is being implemented in some selected districts of the Upper East Region.
LEAP beneficiary households are also linked to the Labour Intensive Public Work (LIPW) project under the GSOP.
Under the initiative, able-bodied members in LEAP households are targeted for labour-intensive work in construction activities (feeder road construction, construction of small dam facilities and climate change interventions) in their communities where they earn additional income to boost their household income.
The LEAP programme has also facilitated the registration of LEAP beneficiaries with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and will soon scale up the NHIS registration for beneficiaries nationwide.