14 , May , 2020
All the relaxation offered to construction industry by the government amidst lockdown not wooed the realty developers and the housing societies. Government has allowed construction activities in all most all the regions for specified working hours. Despite of this there are plenty of construction sites that have not yet started due to lack of workers.
Past few days workers of different regions be it Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and other regions have come out on roads protesting to be sent back to their native villages. There are very few left who are still living on their work sites or around the area. The absence of this working staff can delay the ongoing projects for 3-4 months along with putting a question mark on the projects in pipeline.
Developers are making no stone unturned now to please these workers to resume to work like paying them increased wages, incentives, providing food, sanitary items and shelter. Retaining the construction workers is the biggest task so that these workers can at least complete urgent pre-monsoon work. But these extra costs can be bearded by big few names only. Smaller developers would face difficulties given their scale of construction and ability to absorb higher cost burden.
The plight of these construction workers was reported earlier as well by www.realtydekho.com team. They were left abundant by the owners deprived of money, food and other basic necessities. Now when government has taken initiative and arranged transport for them to go back to their homes. Several buses and special trains have been dedicated to transport the migrant worker suffering in cities.
Builders and contractors are also facing a major challenge of planning their site work given the uncertainty around workers’ availability as many of them may hesitate to return soon. This scenario was foreseen by experts earlier as well which will delay the construction activities and push deliveries of projects further. On top of it a significant part of summers has been lost which is being considered as the important for construction industry. Now we are sitting on the verge of pre-monsoon season that will again going to cause the hindrance. Moreover the sudden break has stopped the cash flow for these developers as well.
One of the major reasons of delays has been the delay in decision of sending these migrant workers home and allowing the construction activity. While Haryana’s Gurugram and Faridabad had allowed construction last week only, Delhi and UP towns like Noida and Ghaziabad allowed construction to resume from Monday. By then a lot of buses and trains have fled away with workers.
