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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Review LEAP Programme – CSOs Advocate

By
Bajin D. Pobia, GNA

Wa, Dec. 05, GNA –
Some traditional rulers and civil society organisations (CSOs) in the Upper
West Region have advocated for the review of the Livelihood Empowerment Against
Poverty (LEAP) to make it beneficial to the real extreme poor in the
communities.

“As it is now, the
programme is associated with wrong targeting of beneficiaries and needs
overhauling to allow the extreme poor in the communities to benefit from it,”
they said in a communique signed after a meeting in Wa to develop Citizens’
Manifesto on Social Protection Delivery in Ghana.

The participants
were taken through the overview of social protection programmes in Ghana,
rationale, lessons, challenges and gaps.

SEND Ghana organised
the forum with sponsorship from UNICEF.

The forum sought to
solicit views, ideas and concerns of citizens, especially women and adolescent
girls, on key social protection priorities the country should focus on.

Inputs collated would
be used to develop a “Citizens’ Manifesto” to influence key political parties’
manifesto in the country.

Mr Mumuni Mohammed,
Regional Programme Manager of SEND Ghana, said development programmes and
policies of governments had always come from political parties’ manifestoes.

He urged the
participants to push hard to bring to the notice of political parties issues
that were undermining their overall development.

The communique
called for the involvement of traditional rulers in the communities to help
identify the extreme poor and vulnerable to be rolled onto the programme,
pointing out that political interference had eroded its objectives.

On the National
Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), it called for the restructuring of the NHIS to
make it independent to provide quality healthcare services to the people.

It pleaded with the
Social Security and National Insurance Trust to, as a matter of urgency, pay
all fees directly to the NHIS account instead of the Consolidated Fund, which
they noted was the cause of delay in the payment of Service Providers and the
inadequate supply of essential drugs to health facilities.

The stakeholders
urged the NHIS to include diseases such as cancers and cardiovascular among
other diseases on its treatment list.

Pharmaceutical
companies must be encouraged to establish branches in all the districts to take
care of the provision of essential drugs prescribed to patients, which were not
available at the health facilities, the communique said.  

It encouraged
government to endeavour to complete all school infrastructure and build new
ones to accommodate the Free Senior High School students.

GNA

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