Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations (GFD), the umbrella body of the disability organisations in Ghana has conducted an assessment of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme in relation to persons with disabilities.
LEAP is a social protection intervention of the Government of Ghana to reduce extreme poverty and encourage long-term human capital development, as well as promote access to social services and opportunities among the extremely poor and vulnerable in Ghana.
The programme provides cash and health insurance to extremely poor households across the country.
Persons with disabilities are one such vulnerable group.
The Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations with support from Sightsavers Ghana assessed the impact of the programme on persons with disabilities in the Ga West Municipality.
The objectives of the exercise include ascertaining the level of accessibility of the LEAP grants to persons with disabilities especially women with disabilities in the Ga West Municipality, bringing together service providers and beneficiaries to mutually analyze the underlying service delivery problems and find collaborative ways to address these issues, to develop an inclusive and participatory action plan to ensure disability inclusion in the implementation of the LEAP programme, especially for persons with disabilities, and to increase the ability and accountability of individuals and institutions that are responsible for implementing the LEAP Programme.
Even though they acknowledged that the initiative is a good one, disabled beneficiaries of the programme have raised issues with the initiative.
Their concerns include limited access to information about the programme, lack of fairness in the selection of beneficiaries, inadequately trained staff, and delay in the disbursement of the money.
They also complained that the money is not enough to meet their needs.
Another challenge for disabled beneficiaries is inaccessible disbursement venues, resulting in wheelchair users at some of the disbursement centres having to get down and crawl to access the venues.
Again, the process itself is not accessible, especially to the blind.
After fourteen years of its implementation, the government is currently reviewing the programme.
GFD will be presenting its findings and recommendations to the review team to inform the new policy of the programme.
SOURCE: DisabilityNewsGH.com