LEAP payment starts from July 21

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection on Monday said the 37th manual and 11th electronic-payment cycle of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, comes off on Tuesday, July 21 to Friday, July 24.

The manual payments are made by Ghana Post Company Limited whereas the e-payments are done by MTN mobile money, GhIPSS (ezwich) and AYA Technologies.

The electronic payment system would be scaled up across all payment centres by January 2016.

More than 90,785 beneficiary households in 144 districts are expected to be paid their benefits from May- June.

In a statement issued in Accra and copied to Ghana News Agency, the Gender Ministry said the breakdown of the payment is as follows: one member household would receive GH¢ 48.00.

Households with two eligible members receives GH¢ 60.00, households with three eligible beneficiaries gets GH¢ 72.00 and households with four eligible beneficiaries or more receives GH¢ 90. 00.

LEAP was introduced to support extremely poor households to meet their very basic needs for survival. The program is contributing significantly to the well-being of beneficiaries.

A research conducted by the North Carolina, University of the USA and ISSER of the University of Ghana in 2012, indicated that the LEAP programme has improved the living conditions of the beneficiary households.

Their food intake, school enrollment, health care services, livelihoods, investments in petty trading and livestock, improvement in the local economy and building social networks have all been positively affected.

Currently, there are two mechanisms of payment- the manual and electronic payments.

Officials of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection as well as the Department of Social Welfare would monitor the payments during the period.

Meanwhile, data enumeration to add on additional beneficiary households is ongoing across the country- 60,000 beneficiary households from 44 new LEAP districts and 59 already existing LEAP districts would be added to the current number of 90,785 by September.

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