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Madam Cecilia Abena Dapaah, Caretaker Minister, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, on Wednesday announced that the Ministry is building a database of the core poor in Ghana under the Ghana National Houshold Registry.

She said the selection of beneficiaries under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme is a transparent process and the building of the database would bring on board other deserving beneficiaries for more transparency.

“To ensure more transparency, the Ministry was currently building a database of the core poor in Ghana under the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) and bringing on board other deserving beneficiaries,” Madam Dapaah said.

Madam Dapaah announced the development of the database, on the floor of Parliament, in Accra, in response to a question from Mr Kwame Dzudzorli Gakpey, Member of Parliament for Keta, about steps the Ministry had taken to ensure openness to the LEAP programme for all deserving citizens.

She told the House that so far, the Ministry had collected data in the Upper East, Upper West, North East, Savannah and Northern regions to facilitate the targeting of the poor for social interventions including the LEAP Programme.

She added that the Ministry was about piloting a reassessment of the beneficiaries under LEAP for those who are not extremely poor and bringing on board other deserving beneficiaries.

Madam Dapaah said as a result, in 2016, a new initiative known as the LEAP 1000, a programme also targeted at households with pregnant women and children below one year of age was undertaken.

"Mr Speaker, eligibility for LEAP is based on poverty status and having at least one of the three demographic conditions such as households with orphan or vulnerable children (OVC), elderly poor and persons with extreme disability.

"Mr Speaker, the initial selection of poor households is done through a community-based process and is varied centrally with a proxy means test. Within the category of extremely poor, the programme further targets households with one or more persons who are over 65 years of age, persons living with a severe disability and caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children," she stated.

Madam Dapaah added that the list of those who qualify was shared with communities for validation through community durbars.