The Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare (MESW) is in discussions with the Bank of Ghana (BoG), to deal with challenges over the release of grants for beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme. Grants to about 53,000 households in 83 districts have delayed for 10 months and the two organisations are working for the grants to be credited to beneficiaries. The Deputy Director of LEAP, Mr Lawrence Ofori-Addo, said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic on the status of the LEAP programme after a report by the World Bank on the status of some social interventions such as the Social Opportunities Project to which an amount of US$88.6 mil¬lion had been voted. Approved in May 2010, and with six more years for the completion of the programme, US$9.7 million has been disbursed. The objective of the project include better and improved targeting in social protection spending and increasing access to conditional cash transfers nationwide. The report added that targets for LEAP in 2010 had been achieved with efforts at scaling up and expanding the programme nationwide. Also a review of existing safety net programmes was to be undertaken by the government to improve upon the programme's effectiveness. Mr Ofori-Addo explained that the delays had been due to the BoG's inability to process the late submissions of warrants for the grants which had resulted in the whole process of releasing the grants to start all over again. He was hopeful that the challenges would be resolved soon for payments to begin. On the report of the World Bank, Mr Ofori-Addo further explained that because LEAP had been identified as one of the best administered social protection interventions, it was being used as the launch pad for better targeting of other vulnerable groups in the health, education and other sectors of the economy. He said the ministries of Women and Children's Affairs, Health, Agriculture, Education, and MESW had come together and a common targeting mechanism had been developed, revised and tested and found to be efficient. LEAP was started on a pilot basis in March, 2008 as a major National Social Protection Programme (NSPP) to support the vulnerable in society. The initiative was born out of reviews of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategies I and II that sought to target those who were still economically vulnerable after poverty reduction strategies of the early 2000s.