Social Monitoring Report Semiannual Report February 2015 AFG: MFF Water Resources Development Investment Program- Tranche 1, Nangarhar Valley Development Authority 42091 Grant No: 0167 AFG Project Implementation Office, Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock Kabul, Afghanistan Prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan for the Asian Development Bank. This social monitoring report is a document of the Government of Afghanistan. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of ADB's Board of Directors, Management, or staff, and may be preliminary in nature. In preparing any country program or strategy, financing any project, or by making any designation of or reference to a particular territory or geographic area in this document, the Asian Development Bank does not intend to make any judgments as to the legal or other status of any territory or area. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 1
CURRENCY EQUIVALENTS (as of 30 December 2014) Currency unit AFN AFN1.00 = $0.017 $1.00 = 57.10 AFN ABBREVIATIONS ADB : Asian Development Bank DDR : Due Diligence Report FFA : Framework Financing Agreement GoA : Government of Afghanistan IR : Involuntary Resettlement LAR : Land Acquisition and Resettlement (impacts) LARP : Land Acquisition and Resettlement Plan MAIL : Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock MEW : Ministry of Energy and Water MFF : Multitranche Financing Facility MEW : Ministry of Energy and Water, Afghanistan NBD : Northern Basins Development NVDA : Nangarhar Valley Development Authority PIO : Program Implementation Office SIM S.p.A : Società Italiana Monitoraggio (Italy) WRDIP : Water Resources Development Investment WUA : Program Water Users Association Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 2
GLOSSARY Affected Household/Family: All members of a household residing under one roof and operating as a single economic unit; who are adversely affected by the Project or any of its components. It may consist of a single nuclear family or an extended family group. Affected Person (AP) : All the people (or household) affected by the Project through land acquisition, relocation, or loss of income; and include any person, household [sometimes referred to as project affected family (AF)], firms, or public or private institutions. APs, therefore, include (i) persons whose agricultural land or other productive assets such as trees or crops are affected; (ii) persons whose businesses are affected and who might experience loss of income due to the Project impact; (iii) persons who lose work/employment as a result of Project impact; and (iv) people who lose access to community resources/property as a result of the Project. Category C : A proposed project is classified as category C if it has no involuntary resettlement impacts. Displaced Persons : People who are physically displaced (relocation, loss of residential land, or loss of shelter) and/or economically displaced (loss of land, assets, access to assets, income sources, or means of livelihoods) as a result of (i) involuntary acquisition of land, or (ii) involuntary restrictions on land use or on access to legally designated parks and protected areas. Jerib : Traditional unit of land measurement in Afghanistan. One Jerib is equal to 2000 square meter of land. 5 Jeribs make 1 hectare. Jirga : Pashto language meaning a community development council or assembly. Land Acquisition: The process whereby a person is compelled by a public agency to alienate all or part of the land s/he owns or possesses, to the ownership and possession of that agency, for public purposes, in return for fair compensation. Rehabilitation : Compensatory measures provided under the Policy Framework on involuntary resettlement other than payment of the replacement cost of acquired assets. Relocation : Displacement or physical moving of the APs from the affected area to a new area/site and rebuilding homes, infrastructure, provision of assets, including productive land/employment and re-establishing income, livelihoods, living and social systems. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 3
Shura: Local institution which represent the seniors of a rural community. They are mostly the decision makers at village level. There are two types of Shura - NSP/MRRD established shuras and tribal shuras. NSP shuras or CDCs are responsible mostly for developmental work while the tribal shuras are responsible for conflict resolutions, jirgas etc. Currently both shuras function for both responsibilities and are represented by the same group of people. Vulnerable : Who might suffer disproportionately or face the risk of being marginalized from the effects of resettlement and includes : (i) female-headed households with dependents; (ii) disabled household heads; (iii) poor households that fall on or below the poverty line (within the meaning given previously); (iv) landless; (v) elderly households with no means of support; (vi) households without security of tenure; (vii) households of indigenous population or ethnic minority; and (viii) marginal farmers (with landholdings of five acres or less). Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 4
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1. Introduction: 1.1 Background: 1. The Government of Afghanistan (GoA) entered into a Framework Financing Agreement (FFA) with Asian Development Bank (ADB) under the tranche 1 of Multi-tranche Financing Facility (MFF) to finance the Water Resources Development Investment Program (WRDIP). The purpose of this investment program is to increase the productivity of irrigated agriculture and improve environmental sustainability due to improved water resources management through infrastructure development, capacity building and institutional strengthening. 2. Tranche 1 has four components: (i) Northern Basins Development (NBD) that includes rehabilitation and upgrading of irrigation infrastructure, and development of a river basin agency (RBA) and water users associations (WUAs) for water management; (ii) Nangarhar Valley Development Authority (NVDA) Improvement that includes irrigation system rehabilitation and upgrading, development of WUAs, and a management reform plan for the NVDA; (iii) Flood Management that includes development of flood protection infrastructure along the Amu Darya River and development of a national flood management program; and (iv) Project Management and Program Development that includes a program development facility to prepare the subsequent two tranches of the MFF. 3. The two components under Tranche 1 - C1: Northern Basins Development (NBD) and C3: Flood Management, fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW). The component C2 of the Tranche - Nangarhar Valley Development Authority (NVDA) Improvement, is under the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL). 4. The NVDA component comprises rehabilitation of the 72 km Nangarhar main canal and associated structures. This will contribute to enhancing the smooth flow and equitable distribution of irrigation water to the private and state owned lands located in Surkh Rud, Behsood, Bati Kot, Ghani Khel and Mohmand Dara districts of Nangarhar Province. Facilitating a more equitable and efficient distribution of irrigation water across the whole area of this canal will result in improved agricultural productivity from increased yields, expanded irrigated area, and increased cropping intensities. NVDA improvement location map is presented in Figure 1. 1.2 Rationale and Status of the Report: 5. Rehabilitation of the NVDA canal was originally planned based on the concept of implementing the improvement works involving no land acquisition and resettlement (LAR) impact. The project thereby was considered as Category C project for the involuntary resettlement (IR) safeguard as per ADB s safeguards policy. Preparation of a Land Acquisition and Resettlement Plan (LARP) therefore was not necessary to be in place. However, the Tranche 1 as a whole is classified as Category B for the IR safeguard (the MEW subproject has IR impacts) and during rehabilitation and upgrading of the canal and associated structures, the sub-project requires compliance with ADB s safeguards requirements on involuntary resettlement (IR), adhering to Afghanistan laws and policies, in order to make sure that the project followed all safeguard requirements and no one is disadvantaged in the process of development. Hence, this semi-annual monitoring report is prepared to report on such issues to complement the semiannual monitoring report for the MEW subproject. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 6
1.3 Basic information on the Project: 6. The project implementation process includes both physical and non-physical works: Physical works: i. System rehabilitation: This component comprises comprehensive rehabilitation and upgrading of the irrigation system that includes repairs to the main canal head gate; improved protection walls; new head gates on secondary canals; and works on siphons, spillways, and passages for drainage washes. All secondary and larger tertiary canals will be rehabilitated and fitted with new improved control structures. These works will be executed on and benefit both the 11,000 ha of State Farms and 14,000 ha of Private land. ii. Improved Canal Access Points for Women: The NVDA improvement component will also support work with the IUAs and community development councils to develop water access points within the canal network for women to wash and collect water for household use. Non-Physical works: iii. iv. NVDA Reform: Institutional reform of NVDA under a corporatized management structure is a key priority of MAIL. This component will support preparation of an institutional reform and business plan with associated adjustment costs for the restructuring of NVDA on a corporate basis. An important part of the institutional reform is creation of a sustainable irrigation service delivery agency to manage the main canal and an O&M financing mechanism for the irrigation system. The project will provide interim O&M financing on a declining basis until the new system is put in place. Irrigation User Associations: The Project will mobilize and legally establish IUAs on the privately managed lands and on lands with leaseholders. A training program for IUAs and farmers will be developed. The NVDA IUAs training will include demonstration activities for (i) improved irrigation and agricultural techniques for greater productivity and efficiency, and (ii) on-farm water management. These activities will also be made available to NVDA staff or other leaseholders farming the NVDA land. 2. Organizational Structure and Management: 7. The NVDA project management team called PMO is based in MAIL Kabul while the project implementation team called as PIO responsible to implement the project is based in Nanagarhar, Jalalabad. PMO is consisting of: 1. Project Deputy Director 2. Finance Officer 3. Admin/HR Officer While PIO based in Jalalabad is consisted of 1. Project Director 2. Engineering team 3. Finance Manager 4. Procurement Manager 5. Admin Manager 6. IT Manager Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 7
7. Monitoring and Evaluation Officer 8. Institutional Reform Team Consultant: 8. SIM S.p.A an Italian Consulting firm was contracted by 28 th December 2011, with an amount USD 3515400.00 for providing the NVDA project team with consulting services throughout the project implementation period. Contractor: 9. Through an open bidding process EID a national construction firm was awarded with a contract to rehabilitate the NCB Civil Priority structures from 24 th July 2013 to 24 th February 2014, with assigned amount of 101 million Afghanis. The NCB rehabilitation works had been completed well on time without any adverse impact in regards to social safeguard. 3. Description of the Project Component NCB: 3.1 Purpose: 10. The purpose of the project was to improve the functionality of existing water distribution network from the main canal into the secondary and tertiary canals. With this, the project aimed to better managing the distribution of irrigation water across the whole network of the NVDA Irrigation system. 3.2 The Works: 11. The assorted locations of the works are shown below in table 1. The contract involves the Rehabilitation and Upgrading (R&U) of 15 structures along the main canal for the equitable irrigation water apportionment. The distribution of these structures across the NVDA Command area along the main canal is shown in Table below. Rehabilitation Structures per District (Table 1) Canal Number of Structures Comments Surkh Rud 3 Behsood 1 Bati Kot 4 Ghani Khel/ Shinwar 6 Mohmand Dara 1 TOTAL 15 All works were on the canal land that belongs to NVDA and did not require land acquisition. During the NCB implementation, it was observed by the survey team that all the civil works on the main canal had no resettlement impact. The project had no adverse impact on the lives and resources of the community. No encroachers, squatters and/or private persons had been found using the land owned by NVDA Canal and thus it is, herewith, confirmed that there were no encroachers and squatters using the NVDA canal right of the way (RoW) for any residential or economical activity. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 8
3.3 Implemented work: NCB 12. This component was comprised of rehabilitation and upgrading of 15 priority structures along the main canal. Due to seasonal flash floods in recent past they had been mostly washed away and had needed priority to be rehabilitated well ahead of time and for this purpose the project management decided to incorporate into the project a new component as NCB, which did not exist in previous project intended plan, that had only one ICB component under NVDA Improvement Project. Figure 3.1: Organizational structure for the NCB Project Director, PIO- Jalalabad ADB, TA Social Safeguard Officer Institutional Reform Team -PIO-NVDA Deputy Project Director PMO, Kabul Physical Output Consultant Contractor (civil work) Below are the concluding remarks for completed work as NCB: No permanent or temporary land acquisition was required. No relocation of families, whether temporary or permanent, was required. The canal is spread over 72km, and the area it covered is NVDA s property, during rehabilitation work there was no temporary or permanent land acquisition required. The interviewees responses indicate that no land acquisition is needed in the rehabilitation sites and added that all these sites which are mostly deserted areas belongs to NVDA Canal. It was mentioned by the interviewees that this rehabilitation work in the short run have created employment opportunities in the concerned area for the local population, as a few of the community s young people used to go to local markets, mainly (Jalalabad City, and Bati Kot Bazaar) to earn their livelihood by working on daily wages. The Kambo siphon located in Farm Hada (Farm No1) needed urgent attention. Here beside the construction of the retaining wall repair of the siphon was also needed and this was the siphon which is providing irrigation water to the whole area of Farm Hada. Here the whole area, though, mostly gravel and hill type, and belongs to NVDA. During the rehabilitation work, it had been confirmed that no member of the community was affected. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 9
It was also found out from the interviews with Mirab 1 s that there is no need for any land acquisition and all the sites chosen for rehabilitation are NVDA entities. The community also has local Shuras and they somehow are familiar with the rehabilitation work particularly their roles and responsibilities in rehabilitation interventions. A majority of the community of the area especially those who have less land and also busy in daily wage as skilled and unskilled labor were very much eager for the commencement of the activities and fair introduction of labor was done by local Shuras who represented the whole community of the village. 3.4 Proposed Work: ICB 13. The project implementation works as component called ICB including mostly civil work as (repairs to the main canal head gate; improved protection walls; new head gates on secondary canals; and works on siphons, spillways, and passages for drainage washes), will not involve any land acquisition or relocation of any family. Study across the project sites and review of the engineering plan, discussion with the community including private land owners and physical observation indicate that the project will not involve any adverse impacts on the community. A standard questionnaire was used in conducting the survey, the result of which establishes under the guidelines of ADB that this subproject qualifies to be categorized as C for the IR safeguards, indicating no impact. 14. In order to fill out the questionnaire, joint field visits by the personnel of General Directorate of Canal, PIO (NVDA project IR Team) and SIM S.p.A were conducted to project targeted areas for ICB works. A total of 60 farmers/families head/local elders were interviewed along the entire canal length, both at East and West sections, covering about 25,000 hectares of both public and private land under the project command area. In addition to this, information regarding social and economic aspects of the project was obtained through general discussions with the community. In the process of survey work, the obvious constraint had been the threat of insurgency in certain project implementation area. However, with support from the General Directorate of NVDA, survey and consultation with the community people were possible in a better manner. During discussions, it was repeatedly confirmed by the community that the project works does not affect any private lands, forests, houses, businesses or structures of communities. Original hard copies of the filled up questionnaire are available in the office of the PIO/NVDA, Jalalabad. 15. For future activities (ICB), an action plan is ready to be put in place in regards to the social safeguard of the community. Plans to regularly monitor the activities of the contractor have been developed and also will be timely consulted with the community against the approved LARP. 4. Social Impacts Monitoring and Mitigation Measures: a. Social Monitoring Summary: 16. The work done successfully so far is the component called NCB Civil Priority Structures at NVDA Main Canal. It had 15 structures partially damaged due to seasonal flash floods. Although to comply with ADB rules and regulations a Due Diligence was carried out and the DDR was submitted to ADB before award of the contract for NCB, according to ADB s Safeguard Policy Statement the entire subproject qualifies to be having no IR impact on the community. 1 Mirab is an elected person by the landowners. He is responsible to distribute water for irrigation purposes and solve other matters related to water and irrigation, and also possesses very good experience in operation of an irrigation system in a well accepted traditional way. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 10
17. The table below shows that a few minor issues arose during the NCB implementation and these were successfully been resolved: S.No Issue Location Action Taken 1 Access Road Issue at Surkhab Siphon District Successfully Resolved the Issue SurkhRud 2 Stone Masonry Wall Hesara Kanda District Ghani Khel 3 Flood Protection Wall at Charwazi District Mohmand Dara Successfully Resolved the Issue Successfully Resolved the Issue a. LARP, DDR and Work Plans: 18. As the NCB component was of Category C for NVDA project as per ADB guidelines there was no need of any LARP. But to comply with SPS a Due Diligence was carried out and surveying all the 15 structures along the main canal a Land Acquisition and Resettlement Plan was developed and was submitted to ADB by MAIL. This plan was accepted by ADB for its review and comments and was then approved to be part of the bid document of NVDA project. a. Site Inspections and Audits: 19. During the NCB implementation phase regular site visits had been conducted by the NVDA Social Safeguard Officer in collaboration with consulting firm (SIM S.p.A) jointly to each the priority structure and for every time the community was thoroughly consulted of any social issue if raised due to civil work. And to obtain data an ADB standard questioner was used. The contractor having the LARP before hand was also timely monitored for their implementation work. a. Consultation and Complaints: 20. A grievance redress mechanism has been established at the NVDA PIO, and on timely basis community had been consulted to inform the project team of any adverse impact the project have on the community. Complaints received during the implementation of NCB project were properly addressed and resolved through a site visit by a joint team of PMO, consultant and counterpart representatives. For example in Surkhab Siphon site, a long 330 m embankment was constructed and thus the access road of the community was destroyed. The community complained and then after the site visit a new access road was constructed through the project budget that resolved the community problem. The other examples are already available in the success story report of NVDA. Therefore complaints register system is set in place to register complaints from the community and/or any other stakeholder. 5. Conclusion: 21. With the first semi-annual social monitoring report for NVDA-NCB, on tranche 1 of the WRDIP, this trend will be continued. ADB will be informed with timely reporting mechanism for future activities of the NVDA project progress as the other component of the project called ICB is put in place for implementation. Bi-annual Social Monitoring Report NVDA Page 11