Vijayawada: Some residents living in the vicinity of the proposed Amravati capital city have written to the inspection panel of the World Bank maintaining that they have been negatively impacted by the process of assembling land for the city, and by activities related to the proposed World Bank-financed Amaravati Sustainable Capital City Development Project.
If the board approves an investigation into the claim, the inspection panel will examine the World Bank’s compliance with its institutional policy framework. The panel will then submit a report to the WB’s Board. This process is likely to take several months but will not impact project preparation activities.
The ASCCDP, currently is at an early stage of preparation, it is expected to fund discrete urban infrastructure investments, including an initial road-grid network of about 145 km and flood mitigation.
It will also help upgrade village infrastructure in some of the 24 villages so as to integrate them fully into the capital region. The project will also finance a programme of institutional support activities aimed at strengthening urban governance institutions in the new capital area.
The World Bank is preparing a loan of $300 million for the ASCCDP, which will be co-financed by a $200 million loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The inspection panel is an independent mechanism of the World Bank Group aimed at enhancing the accountability of the institution’s development work.
Any project-affected individual or group who believes that the World Bank has not complied with its own policies in the preparation or implementation of a World Bank-financed project can approach the inspection panel to voice their concern or grievances, and request an investigation into the manner in which the World Bank handled the project, according to the communiqué of the CRDA.
World Bank succumbs to pressure, removes report from site
The World Bank had removed the report and recommendation document prepared by its inspection panel from its website from Monday.
The crux of the document was uploaded in documents.worldbank.org which was accessible until late night on Sunday, but from Monday morning the link is giving an error that “this document is being processed or is not available,” which indicates that the document is removed.
There are allegations that the World Bank had removed the document under pressure from the state government.
The World Bank had disclosed the Inspection Panel’s report in its public domain. As soon as articles on the recommendations and findings of the World Bank Inspection Panel appeared in the media the document disappeared immediately from the World Bank public domain, surprising everyone.
A senior IAS officer said once documents were uploaded in the public domain they are not removed, but organisations like World Bank removing documents from its site was surprising and they couldn’t understand if it was because of pressure.
