Compact Changes

August 2014: Under the drainage component of the Infrastructure Activity, MCC completed an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment prior to beginning construction. That study highlighted the need to further investigate the impacts of upstream drainage improvements on the downstream community of Mazyopa. Further environmental and social analysis was completed, as well as a detailed hydraulic analysis, which confirmed that the drainage improvement would result in increased stormwater discharge in the downstream channels drastically increasing the flood risk to a settlement of over 3,700 people and 748 structures. MCC and MCA responded to this risk by extending the drain through the Mazyopa community, as well as supporting the rehabilitation and construction of two bridges used by the neighboring community. To fund this approximately $15 million drainage extension through Mazyopa, MCC removed the construction of the Lumumba Drain from the compact’s activities. This reduced the ERR from 17 percent to 16.5 percent due to a lower beneficiary count by about 57,000, or 3 percent of the total compact.

February 2015: Resettlement programs in rapidly evolving urban environments require flexibility. The original Resettlement Action Plan, completed in 2013, estimated 1,600 project-affected persons. However, by the compact end date there were 5,167 project-affected persons. This is due to two main reasons: (1) there were significant changes in construction design after the Resettlement Action Plan was completed; and (2) Lusaka continued to experience rapid population growth and development in the two years between the development of the Resettlement Action Plan and beginning of construction. Given these reasons, in January 2015 the resettlement budget increased from $6,732,499 to $26,285,081 by reallocating contingency funds under the Infrastructure Activity. The ERR was not affected since the ERR was developed at the project level and the overall budget of the project did not change. Likewise, there was no change to the number of beneficiaries.

February 2016: MCC reduced the SCAP connection target rate from 100 percent to 80 percent based on experiences from similar projects and to ensure efficiency of the system. While a number of different interventions were put in place to support households to connect, in view of other experiences with low household connection rates in Lusaka, the team determined that 80 percent was a more realistic number. This reduced the ERR from 16.5 percent to 14.7 percent and the number of compact beneficiaries from 1,230,413 to 1,199,962.

November 2016: In November 2016, MCC and MCA identified a budget shortfall of $22 million due to unforeseen circumstances that resulted in cost escalations, especially on the drainage activity. These unforeseeable circumstances included but were not limited to the following:

• Substantial underground rock formations not detected during preparatory works;
• Change in the number of project-affected persons and increased in-kind replacement of structures built leading to increased resettlement costs;
• Underground utility relocations that had not been geo-referenced by utility companies that must be moved during construction works at a cost;
• Alignment of the detailed designs to adjust to changed circumstances in order to avoid high value impacts;
• Design error which led to a $11 million/30 percent increase of the Bombay drain sub-activity; and
• Increased costs associated with construction of the Bombay Drain.

The Government provided this funding in full to MCA in April 2018.