Regional News of Thursday, 24 December 2015

Source: GNA

Welfare of street children is a concern - Minister

Nana Oye Lithur, Minister, Gender, Children and Social Protection, has said a social protection package for street children in the country would soon be introduced.

The package, likely to be “cash transfer” under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, is expected to help improve the situation amongst street children.

Nana Lithur said this when addressing a LEAP review meeting in Ho.

The event was on the theme: “LEAP –Building a strong resilient cash transfer system”.

She said there were different categories of people in the street with some being “very vulnerable” and “critically” needing social protection interventions.

She said apart from a possible cash transfer package, children in the street would be provided with employable skills.

Nana Lithur said LEAP, in the past three years integrated the extremely poor into the mainstream economic, social, and political activities and commended staff of the Ministry for their efforts.

She said in August this year, 100,000 more people had been added to the programme bringing the number of beneficiaries to 144,980 beneficiary households in 188 districts in the country.

Included in this group, are pregnant women and children less than two years, from extreme poor and vulnerable homes in parts of the Northern regions, she said.

Nana Lithur said in 2016 the Programme would be further expanded and be driven by e-payment services through the Ghana Inter-bank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) to beneficiaries.