Ghana’s social intervention programmes hailed
Ghana’s social intervention programmes, including the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), School Feeding Programme and the National Health Insurance Scheme, have been hailed as a sure approach to ending poverty and vulnerability in the country.
The country has thus been commended for the successful implementation of the interventions which are helping to change the lives of scores of vulnerable and poor people.
The Deputy Director of Programmes of UNICEF, Ms Vidhya Ganesh, made the commendation at a side event organised by Ghana at the ongoing 54th session of the Commission on Social Development (CSocD54), at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York.
She commended Ghana for its success in the implementation of several social protection programmes which were ultimately helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ending poverty and promoting inclusiveness among people
Ghana's side event
The side event chaired by Ghana’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN, Ms Martha Pobee, had the theme, “Achieving SDG 1: Reviewing Processes Towards Building a Resilient and Efficient Social Protection System in Ghana”.
“I am really excited to see progress of this nature within a short period, both in terms of conceptualisation, policy, mechanics, tools and having a vision and moving swiftly through it. It is really impressing and serves as an inspiration to many other countries, not in only your part of the region but across the world,” Ms Ganesh said.
She was of the view that the best way to succeed with the SDGs was through an honest and transparent partnership.
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, in an address, said the development of an institutional and governance framework from the regional, district and community levels had led to the efficient management of the implementation of social protection interventions in the country.
She also said the ministry had set up a national targeting unit where all households under the social protection programme were going to be captured for effective monitoring and collaboration.
Social interventions
On the School Feeding Programme, Mr Felix Kwaku Logah, a member of Ghana’s delegation, said an impact assessment of the programme undertaken by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, in partnership with the North Carolina University, in 2012 showed that it had had a positive impact on the extremely poor in Ghana.
“LEAP is reaching out to the poorest families in Ghana and is having impact on the well-being of targeted families,” he stressed.
He also said the LEAP programme had helped in addressing the basic food needs of the beneficiary families, increased access to health care and that more than 90 per cent of LEAP beneficiaries had been enrolled onto the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
The programme had also increased basic and secondary education enrolment and attendance in LEAP communities, he added.
Making a presentation on “Institutional Arrangement for Consolidating Social Protection in Ghana: The Social Protection Policy and the Bill’, the Acting Director of Social Protection, Mr Richard Adjetey, explained that the country’s social protection approach was to cater for the entire life cycle while strategically meeting national goals and objectives and filling anticipated gaps.
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