90,000 Households to receive LEAP from today

Daily Graphic Jul - 20 - 2015 , 23:50 2 minutes read

More than 90,000 households will receive payment for May and June 2015 for the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.

The payment, which will be the 37th manual and 11th e-payment cycle, comes off from today, July 21, to Friday, July 24, 2015.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, 90,785 beneficiary households in 144 districts are expected to be paid their benefits.

The breakdown of the payments are as follows: One member households will receive GH¢48; households with two eligible members will receive GH¢60; households with three eligible beneficiaries will get GH¢72 and households with four eligible beneficiaries or more will receive GH¢90.

These payments cover the months of May and June 2015. Currently, there are two mechanisms of payment—the manual and electronic payments.

The manual payments are made by the Ghana Post Company Limited whereas the e-payments are done by MTN mobile money, GhIPSS (e-zwich) and AYA Technologies. The electronic payment system will be scaled up across all payment centres by January 2016.

Research

A research conducted by the North Carolina University, USA, and the Institute of Social, Statistical and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana in 2012 indicated that the LEAP programme had improved the living conditions of the beneficiary households through their food intake, school enrolment, health care services, livelihoods, investments in petty trading and livestock. The local economy and social networks have all been positively affected.

According to the statement, data enumeration for additional beneficiary households was going on across the country. Presently, 60,000 beneficiary households from 44 new LEAP districts and 59 existing ones will be added to the current number of 90,785 by September this year.

In a related development, victims of the June 3 flood and fire disaster will start receiving their cash transfers under the GH¢3.9 million emergency LEAP programme from Friday, July 24, 2015.