Gender Ministry pushes for more financial support

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection says strengthening Social Protection intervention programmes in Ghana will help to meet the aspirations of more extreme poor people in Ghana.

Kwesi Armo Himbson, Chief Director of the Gender, Children and Social Protection said this in Washington, United States, at the ongoing Ghana Social Protection Reverse Mission on the theme: Safety Nets in Ghana-Innovations, Challenges and Successes.

The Ghanaian delegation is made up of Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Alhaji Collins Dauda, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mona Quartey, Dep. Minister of Finance and Mr. Mawutor Ablo, Director of Social Protection at the ministry.

In a presentation monitored by The Enquirer via video conferencing in Accra, Mr. Armo- Himbson said the Ministry sees Social Protection as a tool to fight poverty in the country.

“Over the years that we have looked at this problem, we could see social protection as a tool to address inequalities coming up”, he stated.

He said, in the nation’s effort to advance through sound economic policies, definitely some people may be left back, pointing out that social protection is a measure to mitigate such challenges confronting the extreme poor.

According to Mr. Armo-Himbson, what has been realized is that there’s a myriad of social protection programmes - about 44 of them, which were uncoordinated and all seeking to address the issues of poverty.

He outlined some of the programmes as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), NHIS, School Feeding, Free School Uniform and Exercise Books
Others include the Labour Intensive Public Works, LESDEP, Youth in Farming and Block Farming as some of the programmes which are all geared towards helping the extreme poor to mitigate the shocks of economic hardships.

Mr. Himbson noted, however, that the programmes are scattered across many ministries and agencies, adding that, it makes it difficult to coordinate them to make it easy for effective social protection.

Notwithstanding, he stated that a rationalization exercise has been done to streamline social protection in Ghana and also calls for the development of National Social Protection Policy.

Touching on LEAP, Mr. Dzigbordi Agbekpornu, LEAP Coordinator, said frantic efforts are ongoing to meet the target of 200,000 LEAP beneficiary households in the country at the end of the year.

According to him, as the programme expands, it would implement the E-payment system in December to ensure efficiency, adding that currently it’s on pilot basis.