Oye Lithur blasts negligent Social Welfare Officers

A two-day monitoring exercise by the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur has exposed some negligent attitudes of some Social Welfare officers at the Agona East District of the Central Region.

The monitoring exercise was meant to oversee the registration of about 60, 000 households to be considered for the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme as part of plans to increase the number of beneficiary households nationwide to 150,000 by July, 2015.

However, during the Minister’s visit to one of the centers on Wednesday at the Agona East District, which has been earmarked as one of the poorest districts where an estimated of 600 households are expected to benefit, it came to light that the social welfare officers led by their district head, Mr. Mohammed Aberee had not initiated all guidelines given by the Ministry, thereby delaying the registration exercise.

In a state of shock, the minister expressed her disappointment about the performance of the officials and requested for an immediate schedule to be delivered to the ministry from the officials.

“I have come on monitoring and there’s nothing happening here. I was expecting to see the enumerators administering the questionnaires to potential beneficiaries. I got here this morning and the Regional Director was not here and no arrangement has been made so far. Where are the enumerators? Where are those supposed to be doing the work? Why are they not here? You were supposed to have started last week.

“I am disappointed in what I’m seeing in Agona East. You have a time table, so I’m asking you to endeavour to go by the time-table to ensure that whatever programmes or activities scheduled for this increase is done properly. This exercise is time bound and we’re supposed to finish so that the information will be kept in the system,” the minister fumed.

She further expressed her dissatisfaction with the level of preparation and the work done so far by the officials, saying, “nothing has been done and it is two weeks since you had the notice, and you have done virtually nothing about it.”

Hon. Nana Oye Lithur urged them to speed up with activities in order to meet the deadline to avoid any inconvenience.

“Please try and take your work seriously because this is a national exercise for poor communities. The purpose of the exercise is for government to support poor people, so if you don’t do your work as officials it will be a problem,” she added.

Officer’s Reaction

After admitting that they (officials) had performed below expectation, the District Social Welfare Officer, Mohammed Abeere, said his team will do everything possible to ensure that they meet the deadline.

“We will do everything within our strength to get it done. We will be with the enumerators to ensure that the right beneficiaries are selected to benefit; we are very sorry for what happened and pledged to live up to your expectations,” he explained

LEAP

The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is a social cash transfer programme which provides cash and health insurance to extremely poor households across Ghana to alleviate short-term poverty and encourage long term human capital development.

Currently, 90,785 beneficiary households from 144 districts across the country are under the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP).

The Ministry for Gender, Children and Social Protection is mandated to ensure that this project is achieved.