Communication Minister asks GIFEC to do monitoring on projects
Dr Edward Omane Boamah, Minister of Communications has charged the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) to do more monitoring and evaluation to ensure the effective use of its projects.
He said monitoring and evaluating of projects undertaken by GIFEC would go a long way to check the effective use and safety of equipment and that the huge investments into the various areas could be wasted if effective and efficient monitoring was not done.
Dr Boamah said this during an interaction with Board Members and Staff of the GIFEC Secretariat in Accra.
He asked GIFEC to continue with their good work of bridging the digital divide in the un-served and under-served communities of the country.
Dr Boamah was happy about the prison connectivity project, adding that, “The manifestation of what GIFEC is doing is out there for everyone to see in the prison, nursing, post office and sustainable fishing projects.”
“If you go to the prison and experience at first hand the inmates who have been schooled on how to use the computer, the joy is that by the time they exit from prison they are obviously going to be well trained, one way or the other in computing, and the period that they are going to spend in prison will not have gone to waste”.
He urged telecommunications companies to buy into GIFEC’s vision of deploying telecommunication masts in remote communities to achieve universal access to electronic communication in the country.
Dr Boamah said it was encouraging to note that the number of SIM card subscribers had increased from 11 million in December 2008 to over 25 million in December 2012.
Mr Kofi Attor, Administrator of GIFEC assured the minister of his outfit’s desire to achieve its mandate in support of government’s “Better Ghana Agenda” by ensuring that the gap in ICT usage between the urban and the rural communities was closed.
Source: GNA