The Implications of Delay of Leap Cash Grants on Beneficiary Households In Ho Municipality

Abstract

The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is a social intervention introduced in 2008 by the Government of Ghana to offer both conditional and unconditional cash grants to the vulnerable. However, payments to the beneficiaries have been irregular. This study therefore sought to examine the effects of delays and the coping strategies adopted by the beneficiary households to deal with the delays. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. A sample size of one hundred and ten (110) respondents were included in this study. The study further adopted an exploratory research design. Thematic approach and descriptive statistics were respectively used to analyse the qualitative and quantitative data. It came out of the study that delays in payments cause most of the beneficiaries to borrow money for feeding purposes whereas others rely on people‘s benevolence or buy food items on credit. Others also sell their farm produce and plead with school heads to pay children‘s fees by instalments. The study recommends that Government should endeavour to release funds on time to the beneficiaries. A national cash transfer fund could be instituted to solicit funds from individuals, corpoarate bodies and development partners to ensure continous and timely inflows of cash to the beneficiary households.