Labour pain gets real for realtors

Gujarat’s realty market has changed rapidly over the past few years. At a time when large projects like townships, mass housing, IT parks & special economic zones are coming up, developers are facing acute labour shortage.
The majority of infrastructure projects have been desperate for labourers — both skilled and unskilled, for the past couple of years.Gradually, realtors are moving from labour intensive conventional methods to high-tech mechanised way of developing real estate.
Gujarat’s real estate and infrastructure industry is worth nearly Rs 50,000 crore, says Jaxay Shah, national vice-president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association (CREDAI). “The industry can’t afford to delay projects because of labour shortage. The only option we have is to go high-tech and adopt mechanization,” said Shah.
Many city builders are exploring precast concrete technology, he says explaining, “Here, concrete cast is in a generic form which is then cured in a controlled environment and transported to the construction site and lifted into place. In contrast, standard concrete is poured into sitespecific forms and cured on site.”
Kamal Singal, CEO Arvind Limited (realty division) says that builders have started using ready-mixed concrete,which comes wet and at the time of constructing ceiling and other structures, it can be pumped as high as 10 storeys. Besides, various types of cutters, compactors, cranes, material lifts, JCBs for excavation are being used, which has pushed labour requirement down by half, says Singal. The industry heavily depends on labourers mostly hailing from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Panchmahal of Gujarat.
Projects under various government schemes including Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREG) are providing lucrative options to migrant labourers near their native places. According to builders, as against 30 lakh workers required in the state’s construction industry, only 50 per cent workforce is available. “Even numbers of labourers from within Gujarat have also decreased,” says Dinesh Parmar, a labour contractor. “Besides government schemes and the growing manufacturing sector has snatched away unskilled labourers from the industry.
Good monsoons in last half decade have created options for them,” says Rishabh Patel, vice-president of Gujarat Institute of Housing and Estate Developers (GIHED).