LEAP Secretariat inaugurated in Accra
A GH¢1.3 million World Bank-funded secretariat to house the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme has been inaugurated in Accra. Among other facilities, the one-storey office block contains a conference and syndicate rooms, an archive, offices and a server room.
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Launched in 21 districts with 1,654 beneficiaries in 2008, the LEAP programme is a social protection programme which provides grants once every two months for vulnerable and extremely poor people.
Currently, the programme benefits almost one million people in 213,000 households in 216 districts. The number of beneficiaries is expected to increase by 15 per cent this year.
Flagship programme
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, who inaugurated the secretariat, said LEAP, which is the country’s flagship social protection programme, had targeted 2.2 million beneficiary households across the country in the near future.
The programme is for the benefit of the ordinary Ghanaian who has no means of income generation, orphans and the vulnerable. Beneficiaries include those aged 65 and above and the severely disabled who cannot work.
Others are very poor pregnant women and infants below one year in selected districts.
Nana Oye tasked the LEAP team to work towards ensuring that beneficiaries who could work were given skills training, so that they could be weaned off the programme in future.
She commended the staff of the secretariat and the World Bank for making the programme a success.
Way forward
The National Manager of LEAP, Mr Dzigbordi Agbekpornu, thanked the minister for her foresight in putting up a secretariat for the programme and expressed optimism that the facility would help enhance work and increase productivity.
He said LEAP had migrated all of its beneficiaries from being paid manually onto an electronic payment platform, a system that had increased efficiency in the payment of money.
He said the way forward for the secretariat was to link beneficiaries who could work to productive ventures, as well as ensure nutritional benefits for children on the programme.