ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: Continuing their hunger strike outside the World Bank office for the third successive day, here on Thursday, the victims of the World Bank-funded Taunsa Barrage project criticized the Bank’s Resident Representative for expressing his inability to create an inquiry commission on the project.

The outgoing World Bank chief, Mr John W. Wall, had earlier said the Bank had little say in the execution of the project or in facilitating the creation of an independent inquiry commission, as was being demanded by the Sindhu Bachao Tarla (SBT), the coalition that had spearheaded the protests against the Bank and the implementing agency, the Punjab Irrigation Department.

SBT representative Fazl-i-Rab Lund said that Mr Wall’s assertion was completely baseless as the Taunsa Barrage Emergency Rehabilitation and Modernization Project (TBMERP) was not the first WB-funded project that has resulted in innumerable social and ecological effects. Thus the World Bank could not disown responsibility for a project that should only have been undertaken after a comprehensive appraisal of past experiences.

He said that countries like Pakistan were not entirely ‘sovereign’ as the WB country director was claiming because they were indebted to the tune of billions of dollars.

The World Bank and its allied international financial institutions (IFIs) made direct demands on the government to implement its favoured policies, threatening to freeze further funding if such policies were not adopted.

Political activists were present on the occasion to express solidarity with the hunger strikers.

Aalia Amirali of the People’s Rights Movement (PRM) said that Pakistan was not the only country where the IFIs had been rightfully accused of compromising domestic decision-making processes and imposing a development paradigm that was both socially and environmentally destructive. She said that in India, the World Bank had been forced to withdraw funding for projects that were likely to cause major dislocation of people and incited major protests.

In all such cases, the World Bank and other IFIs had begrudgingly accepted their role in propagating a destructive development model.

Ms Amirali said that it was high time that the World Bank in Pakistan be exposed for its contribution to the mega water paradigm. She said that there was no other way to explain why the WB and Asian Development Bank (ADB) had, in principle, committed to providing close to US$10 billion for the government’s proposed Water Vision 2025 over the next few years.

The SBT hunger strikers vowed to continue their hunger strike until commitments were made by the government and its international patrons, to acknowledge the sufferings and violations that have been caused by the project.

They said that the WB country representative’s pronouncements would have no impact on the SBT’s larger strategy to expose the development model that underlies the TBERMP.

They concluded that in the coming days more activists, organizations as well as members of parliament would be contacted and the protest would be expanded.

They said there were a number of ongoing projects on the Indus River that were also causing destruction and that all persons affected by such projects would continue to mobilise themselves and demand justice.