Cecilia Abena Dapaah
The government has defended its steps toward transparency in the selection of beneficiaries under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.
Caretaker Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Cecilia Abena Dapaah indicated that eligibility for LEAP is based on poverty status and having at least one of the three demographic conditions such as households with orphan or vulnerable children (OVC), elderly poor and persons with extreme disability.
“Initial selection of poor households is done through a community-based process and is verified centrally with a proxy means test,” she told Parliament on Wednesday.
The Minister was responding to questions on the floor of Parliament during which she said “within the category of extreme poor, the programme further targets households with one or more persons who are over 65 years of age, persons living with a severe disability and Caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children.”
“As a result of a new initiative known as LEAP 1000, the programme also targeted households with a pregnant woman and children below one year of age in the year 2016,” she revealed, and added that the list of those who qualify is shared with the communities for validation through community durbars.
“The Ministry is currently building a database of the core poor in Ghana under the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR). So far, we have collected data in Upper East, Upper West, North East, Savannah and Northern Regions,” the Minister intimated.
According to her, this is to facilitate the targeting of the poor for social interventions, including the LEAP Programme.
BY Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House