The Executive Director of the Widows and Orphans Movement(WOM), Madam Abdulai Fati Abigail has added her voice to the call for a review of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program by its implementing authority after several years of implementation to achieve its goal of ending poverty.
Madam Fati was speaking to the host of the Word Community Watch Show, Mr. Simon Agana Blessing on Word Fm on Monday, 24th April 2022 on the challenges facing the LEAP program and other livelihood support programs which is being implemented in Ghana to alleviate poverty among the vulnerable and marginalized in the country.
The Executive Director of WOM, a Non-governmental organization that is into the protection of widows, orphans and other vulnerable persons, thinks that the program has not yielded the needed result and has not been able to migrate people from the poverty class as expected.
’’ Over the years we have only highlighted the giving of the money without looking at the other social protection initiatives that were meant to support these beneficiaries to graduate from LEAP and so what we are doing is to put these people on the survival mood’’
She believes that a social intervention program like the LEAP program should be protected and improved to benefit people instead of calling for the scrapping of it, because it could be the panacea to elevating people from poverty. She was also concerned that the target population are not benefiting from the program but rather people with political affiliations
‘’If we are able to get the targeting right, we will be able to deal with the cycle of poverty in our country.’’ She stated.
The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is a cash transfer program introduced by the Government of Ghana (GOG) in 2008, for extremely poor and vulnerable households which have the following three categories of eligible members: Orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) or, Persons with severe disability without any productive capacity and Elderly persons who are 65 years and above.
But the program has been bedeviled with some challenges such as delay in payment, improper targeting, and attempts by politicians to interfere with the process of selecting the beneficiaries with no regard for standard operating procedures.
Though various attempts have been made to improve the targeting procedures, and improve and expand the program to many vulnerable groups, it seems not to be enough as many are still languishing in poverty.
Madam Fati has therefore advised the government to increase budgetary funding to social protection and livelihood support programs because it was the country’s only way to ending the poverty circle.
She lamented that the “Government has not shown enough commitment when it comes to social protection programs and institutions as compared to other sectors and if you look at the budget, the component allocated to livelihood and social protection is very meager.’’
‘’How can a person live on 35.00 Ghana cedis a month, and now that the 35.00 Ghana cedis have been delayed for months what will these people be living on until they are paid? she quizzed.
The LEAD program despite its numerous shortfalls has made significant strides. According to government reports the number of beneficiary households has increased from 1,645 in 2008 to 146,074 (185 districts) as of 31st December 2015. The number increased to 200,000 by 31st December 2016, and to 250,000 by 31st January 2017.
The World Bank recently released an amount of GH¢42 million through the Ghana Productive Safety Net Project II to the government to pay the 75th and 76th cycles of arrears of the LEAP targeted at 344,000 beneficiaries.
By:Adekurah Wisdom/mywordfmonline.com