Covid second wave: Bengaluru developers buck the trend, don’t see labour shortage

July 12, 2021
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As the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai) raised an alarm over shortage of labour during the Covid second wave leading to project delays in the country, property developers in Bengaluru have managed to buck the trend with government’s help and don’t see severe delays.

Developers in Karnataka got a helping hand from the State Government, which relaxed Covid-19 guidelines for the construction and real estate sector and allowed activities to continue unhindered.

“We are grateful for the construction-friendly policies enacted by the Karnataka Government during the second Covid wave. This combined with our efforts to vaccinate our labour force ensured minimal impact on our workers in Bengaluru. While we did witness a decline in numbers in our labour force in other regions, there has been a significant uptick in this figure over the last few weeks,” Ashish R Puravankara, MD, Puravankara Ltd told BusinessLine.

Echoing a similar sentiment, Bijay Agarwal, MD, Salarpuria Sattva Group said “With regard to labour availability, we have not noticed any impact at our sites in Bengaluru and are operating at 70 percent capacity. Today, the need of the hour is a sentimental boost to keep up with the business momentum and we are hopeful that business will pick up the pace by the next quarter.”

Credai study

Credai, which undertook a study recently on the ‘Impact of Covid Second Wave’ on real estate sector in the country with the participation of 4,813 developers from 217 cities, attributed the delays to a range of factors, with 92 percent developers experiencing labour shortage at sites, 83 percent developers working with less than half the workforce, and over 82 percent of developers facing project approval delays.

Rajendra Joshi, CEO-Residential, Brigade Group had a different story to share and said “Although construction was allowed during the lockdown this time round, we faced a shortage of labour which was down to 50-60 percent. This has impacted construction activity and we expect a few months of delay in some projects.”

Ravindra Pai, Managing Director at Century Real Estate, said “The labour availability situation has been better as compared to last year since the State Government took the right measures at the right time. However, the impact of staggered lockdown in States has led to hindrances in ramping up the construction pace.”

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