A review of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP)Programme must include piloting in the five (5) Regions of the North before it is implemented across the country.
As a capital intensive programme, the piloting, according to the Head of the Management Secretariat (LMS), Mr Myles Ongoh, would help in addressing challenges such as leakages that could arise out of implementation and protect the country’s scarce resources.
He noted that this was to be done by leveraging on the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) data as it would allow for lessons to be learnt before a national rollout.
Mr Ongoh said this when the secretariat met with the parliamentary select committee on Gender, Children and Social Protection in Accra last Thursday on the pilot reassessment exercise.
The Head of the LMS indicated that by the programme design, the LEAP programme was to be reassessed every four years, however,it had not been done since its inception in 2008.
He stressed that the reassessment exercise was aimed at creating an equal opportunity for all for extremely poor and vulnerable households.
Mr Ongoh added that it was also to ensure that the LEAP Programme’s database was updated in response to the changes in poverty levels, household composition and programme design among others.
He said stakeholder engagements were imperative in the build up to the actual implementation to achieve the needed cooperation and collaboration from all relevant stakeholders at both national and subnational levels.
During the engagement, a brief presentation was made by the LMS team to enlighten the committee members on measures which had been taken so far for the pilot reassessment.
Members of the committee also made meaningful and insightful inputs to further enrich the strategy.
BY TIMES REPORTER
