The Lebanese government announced on Monday the beginning of cash transfers towards 150,000 extremely poor households in Lebanon, under the Emergency Social Safety Net Project (ESSN) or AMAN program.
Financed by the World Bank, the program will provide 680,000 individuals with a monthly transfer of $20 per household member (for a maximum of 6 people per household), and a flat amount of $25 per household.
The AMAN program will also cover schooling fees for up to 87,000 children between the ages of 13-18 years “to prevent school drop-out among extremely vulnerable households”, said the World Bank.
The World Bank explained that the assistance “will bring urgent relief to extremely poor Lebanese households who, for the past two and a half years, have been reeling under the pressure of a severe economic and financial crisis that has led to a high increase in poverty levels.”
The announcement comes after the launch and completion of the DAEM Social Safety Net platform, managed by IMPACT, which showed 582,660 Lebanese families registered across 26 districts in Lebanon since the project launched on November 30, 2021.
Out of 583,000 households registered on the AMAN platform, 200,000 households met the criteria for financial aid.
The World Bank also said that household verification, managed by the World Food Program (WFP), started on February 17 and will continue until June.
“Verification, determination of eligibility, and cash transfers are currently happening in parallel to ensure prompt delivery of assistance,” the international financial organization commented.
It added that payments will be made to the eligible households “on a retroactive basis from January 2022 and for one year”.
The World Bank ended the press release by calling the Lebanese politicians “to adopt, urgently and swiftly, an economic and financial recovery plan, and to enact critical and long-awaited reforms to avoid a destruction of its social and economic networks and to halt the alarming human capital loss.”
