Reducing poverty: Social protection interventions make inroads
A total of 324,073 extremely poor households, translating into about 1.5 million individuals, are currently enrolled on the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.
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Also, about four million pupils are currently under the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) while for the National Health Insurance Scheme, the active membership covers over 15 million Ghanaians with over 1.7 million being indigent.
These social protection interventions, including the Education Capitation Grant, and Labour-Intensive Public Works (LIPW), all within the social protection basket, have gone a long way to impact positively on the beneficiaries towards reducing poverty and vulnerability in the country.
The Head of Programmes Development and Coordination at the Social Protection Directorate of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP), Samuel Boakye-Marfo, disclosed these at a sensitisation workshop on social protection organised for Journalists in Social Protection (JISOP) by the Ministry.
Ending poverty
Mr Boakye-Marfo said the country has recorded major strides towards the reduction of poverty and the eradication of extreme poverty.
Quoting the Ghana Living Standard Survey report, he said poverty fell by half between 1992 and 2013 while extreme poverty halved from 16.5 per cent to 8.4 per cent of the population.
He said there had also been marginal progress in the poverty reduction agenda from 24.2 per cent to 23.4 per cent and extreme poverty from 8.4 per cent to 8.2 per cent in 2017.
Pointing out that social protection was a right and not a privilege, he said Ghana was currently implementing a national social protection policy, which, among others, sought to build on the values and principles of fundamental human rights espoused by the 1992 Constitution, scale up social protection incrementally to address the demands and risks individuals encounter at different stages of the life cycle and target the poor with improved access to healthcare, basic income, access to economic activities and social security.
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Mr Boakye-Marfo mentioned some of the challenges social protection faces to include inadequate funding for social protection interventions; absence of a social protection law; absence of a shock response social protection strategy; inadequate and limited coverage of social protection programmes for vulnerable groups and incomplete social registry to augment targeting for social protection.
He, however, indicated that efforts were ongoing to get the Social Protection Bill passed by Parliament; complete the social registry; develop and implement a comprehensive national social protection shock responsive strategy, as well as incrementally scale up social protection programmes in the country.
Media
He urged the media to support public education on social protection, assist in testing policy preferences and options in social protection programme delivery and keep the public informed about social protection priorities and best practices from various parts of the country.
Speaking on the essence of the sensitisation workshop, the acting Director, Social Protection of the ministry, Abena Annobea Asare, said it was to help the journalists better understand the basic things about social protection so that it would help them provide accurate reportage on issues on the subject.
She mentioned the ministry’s social protection interventions to include LEAP, GSFP, Capitation Grant, the NHIS and LIPW.
The Head of the Ghana National Household Registry, Dr Richard Adjetey, said since the ministry started the registry of households in 2015, they have so far been able to cover 2.3 million households and 9.4 million household members.