Local Governance And Social Protection Policy Implementation In Ghana: A Case Of The Leap In Ga East Municipality

ABSTRACT

Social protection has become an antidote to economic and social development in modern governments worldwide. Since 1957, successive governments in Ghana have formulated policies to give relief to the poor and vulnerable in the society. Furthermore, some of these social policies have been rather unsustainable due to the myriad of challenges in policy implementation. However, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme appears to be standing the test of time under different governments from its inception in 2008. Local Government, being a key partner in the LEAP programmeremains very instrumental; however, it has received little attention in governance and in scholarly research on social protection. Therefore, this research seeks to assess the role of Local Government in the implementation of Social Protection policies in Ghana.

This research is purely qualitative. Data was purposively collected from the Ga East Municipal Assembly (GEMA) and some existing literature on social protection, local governance and decentralization was consulted as secondary data.

The research established that Ghana’s Local Government is crucial to the implementation of social protection due to its closeness to the citizens and plays major tasks to ensure the sustainability of the LEAP programme. However, Local Government is highly incapacitated to effectively handle social protection at local level as a result of its challenges and its over-dependence on Central Government. Again, the study discovered that Local Governments at sub-urban areas are somewhat neglected by the center creating a missing link in the synergistic relation that should exist between national and sub-national governments. To this end, a close correlation between multi- sectoral coordination, local participation and sustainability in social protection policy implementation is established in this study.A clarion call is also

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made in this research for stakeholders to undertake a practical move for capacity building to aid the effective and efficient execution of social protection policies at the local level.