Real Estate Projects Crawl Back To Action

Though the government has allowed the resumption of construction activities at non-Covid hotspots of the district, developers say nothing has actually moved on the ground as only about 30 projects have managed to commence work and that too with a thin labour force.

In the 250 real estate projects in progress in Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway areas, developers say that full-fledged construction can’t start before the Delhi borders reopen to let trucks in with raw materials move.

“Each project is currently moving with one-third capacity, there would be around 10,000 labourers actively engaged in the city. Noida-Greater Noida real estate projects absorb around 3 lakh construction workers when operations are in full swing. Now they are just managing with whatever they have. Moreover, not all projects have onsite workers, so those which had, began work. All the projects have been asked to follow social distancing norms with mandatory wearing of masks,” said RK Arora, president of National Real Estate Development Council (Naredco)-UP.
Builders say that resuming of construction activity in the district seems to be more of a formality as the authorities have not yet facilitated movement of labourers and raw materials from other places to the project sites.

“We have requested the authorities to allow workers from neighbouring villages to come and join work. There are various kinds of work at the construction site, masons may be staying on site but what about plumbers, electricians and carpenters — we need to source these people from neighbouring villages and without this manpower, we can’t work on completion,” Pankaj Bajaj, president of Credai-NCR, said.

Amit Modi, vice president, Credai Western UP, added, “The borders are sealed so obviously there is no truck to bring the raw materials to the sites. Second, the contractors who organise workers for our sites are mostly residents of Delhi. So, until the Delhi-Noida border opens, very little will be achieved at our projects.”
The builders have been demanding fiscal relaxation in view of the losses incurred by them due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

“And our fear is that now after tending to the workers through the lockdown, as the commute gets eased many workers would want to return to their villages. We have already lost a huge number of workforce and we could actually be left with major workforce crunch in the coming days,” Arora added.

(Source: Times of India)