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The 2020 manifestos of the two main political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are both silent on extending the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme to cover all eligible beneficiaries.

Although the expansion of the LEAP programme to cover all eligible beneficiaries was prominent in a study that collated the views of the public on their expectations of political party manifestos before they were launched, an analysis of the NPP and NDC manifestos in connection with social protection interventions revealed that both parties did not make a promise to expand the programme.

The study, dubbed the 'Citizen’s Manifesto', among other things, detailed the demand and recommendation of citizens and their expectations of what political parties should concern themselves with to be able to put together a manifesto that would resonate with the aspirations of the public.

Citizens demands  

Presently, there are 750,000 extremely poor persons in the country that are waiting to be enrolled onto the programme.

The study therefore recommended the full capture of all the eligible beneficiaries onto the programme and also increase the financial support to the beneficiaries by 100 per cent.

“This could be done by a regular grant review process such that amounts are adjusted regularly in line with prevailing inflation rates. This will ensure that purchasing power of beneficiaries are not eroded,” the study said.

According to the study, which was compiled by SEND Ghana; a non-governmental organisation focused on improving governance in the country for the benefit of the ordinary citizen and help create an equal society, respondents said the government had to take into consideration the household size of the beneficiaries to determine the grant amount to be given to them.

Respondents also demanded the introduction of complementary services to capture other needs of beneficiaries such as school uniforms, free textbooks among others.

Attempt

Although the NDC 2020 manifesto promised to “establish an Emergency Response LEAP Grant Programme,” it did not detail the scope of the programme and the targeted beneficiaries to help citizens decide if it would capture all the eligible beneficiaries that were currently awaiting to be included in the cash transfer based social intervention.

On the other hand, the NPP 2020 manifesto was silent on the LEAP programme as there was no promise captured in the document that spoke directly to the intervention.

Beneficiaries

The LEAP programme, which involves the distribution of grants to individuals and households living in extreme poverty, has been running since 2008 and caters for some 334,084 households across the country.

The Assistant Director of LEAP, Mr Myles Ongoh, told the Daily Graphic in an interview that a total of 1.4 million beneficiaries had received more than GH¢58 million through the programme as of the end of May 2020.

The beneficiaries are paid varied amounts once every two months, which is termed a circle with the intention to help reduce poverty by smoothing consumption and promoting human capital development among extremely poor households in the country.

The payment structure of the programme was designed in a way that discouraged beneficiaries from being adamant in pursuing alternative sources of income.
LEAP is therefore calibrated in a way that doesn’t make the cash transfers look like a wage but rather an aid to cushion beneficiaries, while they find better ways of sustaining themselves.

Highlights

Despite a total of 750,000 extremely poor people on the waiting list of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, both the NDC and NPP 2020 manifestos did not directly capture the expansion of the programme.