The 35th manual and 9th e-payment cycle of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, comes off from Monday, 26th to Friday, the 20th of this month. Ninety thousand, seven hundred and eighty-five (90,785) beneficiary households in 144 districts are expected to be paid their benefits.

The breakdown of the payment is as follows: one member household will receive GHC 48.00, household with two (2) eligible members receives GHC 60.00, household with three eligible beneficiaries gets GHC 72.00 and household with four (4) eligible beneficiaries or more receives GHC 90.00. These payments cover the months of January and February, 2015.

LEAP was introduced to support extremely poor households to meet their very basic needs for survival. The programme 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 enrolment, 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. 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.

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

Abraham Asare

Communications Advisor