The newly-appointed British High Commissioner to Ghana, H.E Jon Benjamin has paid a duty call on the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to further reinforce Britain’s commitment towards solving gender and other social related issues in Ghana.
H.E Benjamin, who was received by Gender Minister Nana Oye Lithur at her office in Accra, said that the British government is proud to support social protection programmes such as the LEAP in order to improve the lives of Ghanaians.
According to him, social protection was a difficult subject and needed a lot of financial investment and therefore assured the Ministry of the British government’s support in tackling its major issues.
Mrs. Oye Lithur, in turn, expressed appreciation to the British Government for their support to the Ghanaian government in developing social protection policies in Ghana.
She said that the government of Ghana remains very committed to reducing early girl child marriages, and reducing the prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Ghana, adding that, government had taken giant steps in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and reducing poverty the country.
Mrs. Lithur, also revealed that her outfit had received a thirty million pound (£ 30million) support from the British Government to fund an expert mission to develop the Lively Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme and a further three million pounds (£ 3million) for capacity building for LEAP and social protection.
The Minister added that the Ministry had also received an amount of six hundred and sixty thousand pounds (£ 660,000) from the British Government to do research on gender based violence in order to help solve issues of that kind, further citing the British government’s assistance to the Ministry in the electronic piloting of cash transfer in nine (9) districts in seven regions of the country.
By: Diplomatic Call News Desk/ ISD (Benjamin Tandoh)
