Builders’ body to train youth from villages near Mumbai to tackle labour shortage

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As economic activities pick up pace in India with industries re-opening after an over two-month long hiatus, many sectors including the construction business are still finding it difficult to cope due to a lack of workers, many of whom returned to their native places during the lockdown imposed to curb Covid-19 disease.

To overcome this shortage of workers, the Builders Association of India (BAI) has put forward a proposal to train unemployed local youth from villages near Mumbai, according to a report in web portal ETRealty dot com.

The association intends to take the help of NGOs in finding such youth and train them in various trades such as carpentry, masonry, etc.

“By finding unemployed youth who are interested in working as carpenters, masons, fitter etc,with the help of NGOs, they can be trained accordingly,” Mohinder Rijhwani, the newly appointed Chairman of Builders Association of India’s Mumbai Centre, was quoted in the report.

“The industry will thus be able to find skilled workers and tide over the shortage on one hand and the local youth can get the jobs on the other,” he added.

The training centres for skill development will be set up the BAI with the help of the Maharashtra government.

The issue of lack of workers is being faced not just by construction business but by almost every industry ever since lakhs of migrant workers went back to their native towns and villages on Shramik Special trains started by the Indian Railways on May 1.

This has led companies to becoming proactive in wooing back the migrant workers by adopting measures such as paying the workers’ train – and in some cases, even flight – fare, offering higher wages and better working conditions.

In the midst of efforts to bring the economy back on track, the number of coronavirus cases in India continue to rise. With more than 11,000 new Covid-19 cases recorded between Friday and Saturday, the country’s total count has crossed the three-lakh mark, standing at 308,993, as per the Union health ministry data. The death toll from the infection is now at 8,884.