ISLAMABAD, Feb 13: The World Bank has ordered an inquiry into alleged violations of its policy guidelines in implementation of Pakistan's Left Bank Out fall Drainage (LBOD) and National Drainage Programme (NDP) that caused large scale loss to the people, ecological system and agriculture in Badin and adjoining coastal areas of Sindh.

Representatives of four civil society organizations - Pakistan Fisher folk, Save Coast Action Committee, Sindh Aurat Development Association and Action Aid - told a news conference here on Sunday that an investigation panel of the World Bank would visit Badin and Karachi from March 22 to April 1, 2005, to start its investigations.

They said the executive directors of the bank constituted the panel of investigation to probe into the matters alleged in a request for inspection demanded by the people and civil society organizations.

They said it was for the first time that the World Bank-funded projects in Pakistan had been put under investigation by the bank's own executive directors to ascertain policy violations.

They demanded of the World Bank to write off about $1 billion loan it extended to the government for the two projects and to compensate the affected people by utilization of this fund in their rehabilitation and reclamation of the lost environment, ecology and agriculture. They also demanded that extension of the LBOD in other parts of the country be shelved forthwith to avoid further losses.

Giving details of the losses by the projects, Ghulam Mustafa Talpur, Mohammad Ali Shah, Najma Junejo and Khadim Talpur said 32 people were killed as a result of the LBOD since it was launched in 1997 while 50,000 acres of agricultural land in eight union councils had been wasted by salinity or water-logging.

Moreover, they said, about 10,000 fishermen had lost their livelihood, four vast wetlands - two of them internationally recognized - had been degraded owing to damage to the biodiversity, and about 52 species in the area had also been damaged.

They said both the government and the World Bank accepted these losses but were not ready to take the responsibility. The losses had occurred due to non-compliance of the bank's safeguard policies, they alleged.

They also said the LBOD project, which was jointly funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, was to bring drainage effluents from the upstream and dispose it of into the Arabian Sea via the Tidal Link Canal.

However, due to several technical problems the drainage effluents instead of going into the sea started destroying lands and internationally recognized wetlands, they observed.

The project induced problems like flooding, sea intrusion, loss of crops and agricultural land, reduction in fish catch and loss of lives but nobody cared to overcome these faults, they lamented.

Instead, they said, the two multilateral creditors financed the National Drainage Programme, which aimed to connect the existing faulty LBOD disposal system to further upstream and bring more effluent. They alleged that the design of the NDP was faulty and unsustainable, violated the social and environmental safeguards and did not explore possible alternative routes.

The saline effluent coming down the LBOD system and the incoming high tide water from the Arabian Sea, they said, caused the Kadhan Pateji Out fall Drain (KPOD) to overflow and inundate the surrounding agricultural land and villages, including the fishermen villages.

The projects, they further said, had also failed to deal with issues like coastal ecology, safe disposal of saline effluent into the sea, and protection of wetlands which were an important natural habitat and migratory route for waterfowl and nesting grounds for important bird species besides affecting the cultural sites in Badin.

The bank's investigation panel, they said, would probe into violations of six policies and procedures. These are: environmental assessment, natural habitats, indigenous people, involuntary resettlement, management of cultural property and disclosure of information.