* Admissibility date reflects the date the case was officially registered. All other dates pertain to the date in which a stage was completed.
Case Description
Complaint
On 2 December 2009, NAPE (Uganda), Counter Balance (Europe), CLAI (Italy), Sherpa (France), and legal representatives of locally affected people launched a complaint with the EIB Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM). The complainants alleged non-compliance with a substantial number of the EIB's policies, standards, guidelines and procedures, leading to:
- Failure to meet European development objectives
- Failure to assess the economic and environmental soundness of the project
- Failure to guarantee fair compensation to affected communities
- Failure to ensure the implementation of the mitigation measures.
On that basis, the complainants asked to suspend disbursements on the project until the above issues had been satisfactorily addressed.
EIB-CM Action
Having reviewed all available information, the EIB-CM launched an Initial Assessment which included a fact-finding visit to Bujagali. On the basis of an Initial Assessment, the EIB-CM identified the major areas of concern, including negative environmental, social and developmental impacts, mostly regarding the project implementation, for which specific investigation work was undertaken:
- Economic feasibility and affordability
- Resettlement Action Plan (Naminya Community)
- Compensation of T-line affected people
- Spiritual matters
- Blasting effects (mainly Malindi Community)
- Kalagala Offset
In particular, the EIB-CM took the outcome of past investigations by the World Bank’s Inspection Panel (WB-IP) and by the African Development Bank’s Independent Recourse Mechanism triggered by a similar complaint into account.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The areas of concern identified during the EIB-CM Initial Assessment in 2010 regarding concrete environmental and social impacts have been the subject of dialogue and follow-up between the EIB-CM, the financiers, the borrower and the local authorities. All of those issues have been resolved in line with EIB-CM suggestions and/or recommendations:
- Resettlement of project affected people - now fully addressed;
- Impacts of project blasting activities – successfully concluded in May 2013 through a collaborative resolution process which was handled and facilitated by the EIB-CM;
- Compensation of Transmission Line affected people (connecting Bujagali to the network) - now fully addressed by the national authorities in line with EIB-CM recommendations;
- Implementation of the Kalagala offset - now fully addressed in line with EIB-CM recommendations;
- Consideration given to spiritual issues - now fully settled.