Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender
In an effort to make the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) programme more accessible to rural dwellers, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOCGSP) has registered poor aged people at Sege.
The registration, which was done in collaboration with the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), was aimed at capturing the biometric data of beneficiaries to facilitate cash transfer electronically.
Speaking during the registration, Mr Thomas Boateng Quaison, Head of Monitoring and Evaluation, LEAP Programme, MOCGSP, said the biometric registration would cover a total of 146,074 beneficiary households in the 185 LEAP districts nationwide.
‘’The LEAP beneficiaries would thus be registered onto the E-Zwich platform and receive their social cash through this platform which would replace the manual system of transferring cash ’’, he said.
Mr Quaison said since most of the elderly people at Sege, who had been captured unto the Programme, were too old or sick to come for the registration personally, the Ministry had decided to register people who had been delegated by them (the beneficiaries) so that they could access the funds on their behalf.
He said with the introduction of the E-Zwich, beneficiaries would have greater control over the management of their funds as they would decide when to access such funds adding that the E-payment system would also generate accurate and timely report on cash transfers.
Mr Quaison said the LEAP programme was aimed at reducing poverty by promoting access to services and opportunities among the extremely poor and vulnerable households.
‘’It is also to assist vulnerable orphans, elderly persons 65 years and above without any support and severely disabled persons without productivity capacity and recently the extremely poor pregnant women and children under 2 years old’’, he added.
Mr Christian Otuteye, Member of Parliament for the area, expressed his appreciation to Government for extending the Programme to his constituency as it would go a long way to help reduce poverty among them.
He said in all there were about 675 LEAP beneficiaries in Sege and urged the beneficiaries to use the money wisely so that they would not suffer from unnecessary financial hardships.
