Gov�t To Consolidate Social Intervention Programmes

Government has announced plans to consolidate and streamline its social intervention programmes. Ghana currently has about 40 of such programmes aimed at alleviating the plight of the poor and vulnerable. But there have been calls for a review to consolidate the programmes since many of them are not making the desired impact. A delegation from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection which visited Brazil with other stakeholders to learn how they were able to bridge their inequality gap, have submitted a memo to cabinet for consideration. Speaking at a meet the press series in Accra, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, said there will soon be a database to capture the details of the poor and vulnerable in society who are eligible to receive social protection in Ghana. �We are setting up what we call the National Targeting Unit with support from the World Bank within our social protection directorate. This will help us implement what we call the common targeting mechanism and establish a Ghana national household registry. What we�re doing is that we are creating a database and in this database will be names and details of all poor persons and vulnerable who qualify and are eligible to receive social protection in Ghana� she said. Touching on the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty Program, LEAP, Nana Oye Lithur noted that plans were far advanced to increase the beneficiaries from 73,000 to 80,000 by the end of this year. She also noted that the beneficiaries were in over 200 districts across all the 10 regions in Ghana.