The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme will be adding 60,000 more beneficiary households in 44 districts to the programme by June.

This will bring the total number of household beneficiaries on the LEAP programme to 150,785, a statement from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection said.

Meanwhile, the existing 90,785 beneficiary households in 144 districts will start receiving payment from Monday.

According to the statement, the payment which will end Friday, May 22 is for the months of March and April, 2015.

“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,” the statement signed by Abraham Asare, a communications advisor said.

LEAP was introduced to support extremely poor households to meet their very basic needs for survival. The programme is contributing significantly to the wellbeing 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.