News: Realtors to face labour shortage as workers rush to return home-05-05-2020
Updated On: May 05, 2020
Realtors to face labour shortage as workers rush to return home
In such a scenario, realty developers and contractors would have to shell out additional wages or incentivise workers to retain them at sites at least for urgent pre-monsoon work.
MUMBAI | BENGALURU | NEW DELHI: Despite government allowing construction activity across all the regions including the red zones, realty developers and contractors are now staring at a labour shortage after labourers who had stayed back have expressed willingness to return to their native villages, a development that could push back completion dates of projects by 2-3 months.
In such a scenario, realty developers and contractors would have to shell out additional wages or incentivise workers to retain them at sites at least for urgent pre-monsoon work.
So what triggered this change? While earlier no transport was allowed or available for migrant workers to return to their villages, the government is now making mass transport and other related arrangements to send workers back home this time.
“It’s a catch 22 situation for us as well as the government. They will definitely go; we will have to deal with it by incentivising workers at least for the sites that need urgent attention due to onset of monsoon. Hopefully, the supply of raw material will smoothen out soon,” said Jaxay Shah, national chairman, CREDAI.
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.
Experts says this will disturb the schedules and delay construction activity that will ultimately push deliveries of projects further.
“As the supply chain for construction materials is expected to be normalised in the next few weeks, insufficient labour strength could severely impact the construction operations of these companies in the weeks to come,” said a Shapoorji Pallonji E & C spokesperson.
And experts say that the sector has already lost out on significant part of summer that is considered to be crucial for construction activity.
The government has provided relaxation in terms of construction activity even in the red zones, but only with existing available labourers at the sites and with a condition that no workers be allowed from other zones.
Following this, realty developers with large construction activity across its sites may manage to hold some workers back by doling out additional incentives.
However, smaller developers would face difficulties given their scale of construction and ability to absorb higher cost burden.
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.
However, with no cash flows, developers are unable to incentivise the labourers.
The rush among migrant workers across major cities to apply for the government’s transport arrangement to leave for their natives is an indication that not many workers are keen to stay put at sites.
