Government injects $20m into LEAP

Mr. Joseph Yieleh Chireh, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, says the government has injected $20 million dollars into the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme to enable many vulnerable people to benefit.

The amount, he said, was part of the $89.1 million loan facility the government took from the World Bank to help streamline economic activities in northern Ghana and empower the vulnerable.

Mr. Yieleh Chireh said this on Wednesday at the opening of a three-day training workshop on local economic development organised by the Institute of Local Government Secretariat for District Planning Coordinators of the nine District Assemblies in the Upper West Region.

He said the Ghana Social Opportunity Project under the Ministry of Local Government would take $56 million out of the amount to support 40 deprived communities.

Each of the communities would take $3 million with 25 of them coming from the Upper West, Upper East and the Northern regions while the rest of the 15 would be selected from the other regions.

Mr. Yieleh Chireh urged District Assemblies to be proactive in developing the local economies in a way that would feed positively into the national economy.

Mr. Richard Abankwa, an official of the Institute of the Local Government Secretariat, said the focus of the workshop was to make Assemblies more responsive to the needs of the private sector.

Source: GNA