Mr Albert Abongo, Parliamentary Select Committee Chairman for Communication, on Thursday lauded the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC), for winning the Best Project Award for Information and Communication Infrastructure.

GIFEC won the award at the just-ended World Summit on Information Society Project Prizes Ceremony held in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 10, in which over 140 projects were nominated for the 2014 contest.

The Rural Telephony Project, which won the award, targets underprivileged and deprived Ghanaian communities with populations of less than two thousand (2,000) people.

The project provides second generation/third generation (2G/3G) base stations with small cellular antennas providing free Internet Wi-Fi services in addition to traditional voice services.

Mr Abongo, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra during a forum organized by the National Information Technology Agency, observed that GIFEC had indeed, lived to its mandate to extend communication to remote communities and thus open them up for economic development and access to information.

He said the project, which started with a common telecommunication facility that was implemented in close collaboration with telecom companies was transformed into active small cell sites with free Internet Wi-Fi.

He said the project was a novelty at the international level, and further commended GIFEC for using green energy solutions based on solar energy that ensures a pollution-free environment and energy-conserving system, which according to him was very suitable for rural settings.

Mr. Abongo said the objective of the Rural Telephony Project is to motivate telecommunication operators to extend their services into locations of less commercial viability, with the Project bearing the cost of setting up the tower.

The Chairman assured that Parliament would continue to enact good laws to regulate the communications and all sectors of the economy and to exercise its oversight responsibility over them for the good of the nation.

He said government would continue to invest in the communication industry to enhance service delivery and to facilitate information dissemination in the country.