Minister visits communities to assess operation of LEAP

The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mrs Cynthia Morrison, has paid a working visit to some communities in the Agona West Municipality in the Central Region to acquaint herself with the operation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.

Accompanied by some officials of the ministry, Mrs Morrison’s visit took her to Agona Kwaman, Lower Bobikuma and Upper Bobikuma, where she interacted with LEAP beneficiaries in the communities and also assessed the payment processes the beneficiaries go through before getting their stipend every two months.

She said the ministry was in the process of putting in place measures that would ensure that names of LEAP beneficiaries who were deceased were deleted from the register.

According to her, such a move would enable the ministry to delete ‘ghost’ names from the register and pave the way for other potential beneficiaries to be enrolled onto the LEAP programme.

She said that was part of a nationwide process to compile records of LEAP beneficiaries, after which the records would be readily available in all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies for easy verification and scrutiny.

Deceased members

She called on caregivers and relations of deceased members of the programme not to hesitate to inform the ministry, through the Social Development Department, noting that it was totally unacceptable for relatives of beneficiaries of the LEAP programme not to inform the appropriate institution after the death of their relative.

She said that would enable the government to save money that could be used to expand the programme to cover more beneficiaries.

Mrs Morrison, who is also the Member of Parliament for Agona West, called on corporate bodies and churches to voluntarily contribute financially to sustain the programme since it had provided a huge sigh of relief for the beneficiaries.