Gov’t pays June 3 flood/fire disaster victims in Osu

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection on Thursday paid 802 households in Osu in the Korle-Klottey Constituency, whose relatives were affected by the June 3 flood and fire disaster under its emergency LEAP cash transfer programme.

Mr Richard Adjetey, acting Director of Social Protection, who disclosed this to the media after the presentation, explained that each person was given GH?100.00 cash for each household for a period of three cycles across five affected regions, Greater-Accra, Volta, Ashanti, Central and Western.

He said the payment formed the third month cycle of the grant to the affected households, and this showed that the Ministry had honoured its promise.

He said the Ministry scaled down data collected by NADMO from affected individuals from 37,622 in the five regions to 13,500 affected households, that is-members of the same family units sharing a common income and expenditure.

Breakdown of affected households enrolled for the emergency LEAP cash transfer per the affected regions: Greater-Accra - 6,996; Volta -998; Ashanti - 842; Central-1,307; and Western -961.

Mr Adjetey said the MoGCSP integrated the emergency LEAP cash transfer with a donation of relief items from Direct AID, an NGO from Kuwait to some affected communities across the country, including 1,000 mattresses, 1,000 blankets, 1,000 bags of rice, among others.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning; Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies, NADMO, the security agencies, Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems and Direct AID, are the supporting implementing institutions.

Mr Adjetey said families in disaster situations most often resorted to detrimental coping strategies, adding that in view of this, the government of Ghana intervened by tasking the transfer programme to address the immediate needs of the affected households..

He said the objective of the grant was to address the temporary needs of the affected households, by addressing their basic needs and establish or re-establish the livelihoods and productive capacity.