Developers in Mumbai woo migrant workers back to sites with sops
MUMBAI: Expensive airline tickets, enhanced wages, medical insurance, weekly doctor visits... just some of the perks that Mumbai’s real estate barons are offering. Not to their Ivy-league-educated senior executives, but to entice hundreds of thousands of construction workers who left the city in the wake of the Covid-19 spread in April, May and June this year to return.
According to the Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (shortened as CREDAI-MCHI), the apex industry body in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), close to 700,000 of the 900,000 on-site real estate workforce migrated back to their hometowns as soon as Mumbai became the country’s worstaffected Covid-19 hotspot.
“There are hardly 200,000 on-site workers left in Mumbai, and a majority of the projects are in limbo. We desperately need to start work and hence we are trying all means possible to bring them back,” said Rajesh Prajapati, managing committee member, Credai-mchi. “The workers are not ready to come back fearing infection and due to family pressure. We are assuring them that we will take good care of them, and offer them best of the facilities such as Covid-19 insurance as well as weekly visits by doctors.”
On June 8, the Maharashtra government allowed private construction activity to restart, but builders say they have been facing an acute shortage of workers since then, and that they are left with no option but to lure them back with flight tickets, enhanced wages, boarding facilities and medical insurance, in addition to weekly medical check-ups.