Construction Workers

A Research Project

On

Lives of Construction Workers

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Construction forms the second largest economic activity of the country at a formidable size of Rs 320,000 cr. Not surprisingly, an industry of this magnitude generates employment opportunities to about 3 crore construction workers.

Like many industries, the construction industry faces a number of human resource challenges. These include the need to improve the mobility of workers, to provide them with fair wages, adhering to health and safety standards, maintaining personal care and hygiene and to promote education among them. Thus we identified 3 priority areas:

* safety standards and skills development

* awareness of their rights

* initiatives by the Government & the NGOs

Through our project we intend to draw a correlation between these variables.

1. Level of education & training and the rate of injuries & adherence to safety standards

There is a need to train about 4 lakh workers a year to specialise as masons, carpenters, plumbers, scaffolders, etc. But only 20,000 actually get trained

Compared to other sectors, this sector is still very poorly organised and structured. "There are 151 ITIs spread out across the country & NICMAR have training courses for civil trades and conduct training for masons and carpenters.

Most construction workers have to perform high-risk work for low wages. Work at elevation, heavy overhead loads, operation of heavy machinery &confined space work, temperature extremes combine to increase the risk of injuries. We need to find out if the workers are more cautious and follow the safety standards if they are educated as compared to those who are not educated.

2. Initiatives by the NGO's and its impact

There are various organizations who have launched schemes for the welfare of construction workers in India. Nirman, an NGO, is promoting skill development, health and education programmes. The Nirman Mazdoor Sanghatana promotes the democratic rights of construction workers and advocates an equitable distribution of resources. It runs its healthcare programmes at the various sites and nakas & at its Workers Development Centre at the CIDCO Community Centre in Nerul . BG Shirke Construction Technology has co-operated with Nirman for the betterment of its workers. We need to see if the workers are aware of these initiatives and how have these programs made a difference in their lives

3. Welfare acts and the registration rate

The Govt of India has come up with ACTS to provide amenities to the Construction Workers like:

* The Building & Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996; and

* The Building & Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, 1996.

We seek to find the number of workers aware and registered under the act and the reason for low registration

INTRODUCTION

The Project:

Through this project our team aimed to understand the lives of construction workers and in particular, understand the awareness of government welfare schemes initiated for the benefit for the unorganized sector and construction workers.

With respect to the lives of construction workers , we are delved into the following areas:

* Reasons for taking up construction and migratory reasons

* Literacy Levels and Skills Level

* Health and Safety Issues

* Wages & Other Benefits

According to our preliminary findings, various welfare acts have been passed for the social security of the unorganized sector.

However the focus of our research is one particular Act i.e.

The Building & Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996; and the Building & Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, 1996.

* As per Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 every building worker who is between the age of 18 to 60 years and who has been engaged in any building and other construction work for not less than 90 days during the last 12 months is eligible as a beneficiary of the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Fund.

* Application for registration is to be made in the prescribed form and is to be accompanied with prescribed documents by construction worker.

* Registration is voluntary and not mandatory.

* The main responsibility for implementing the Acts lies with the respective State Governments.

As on 31.03.2010, Maharashtra ranks 12th with barely 20000 workers registered out of approx more than 1 lakh construction workers although it employs almost 15% of the construction workforce. This is in stark reality to Tamil Nadu which has almost 2,00,000 workers registered under the Act.

This raised the question ...

Why are there so few construction workers registered under the welfare act in Maharashtra?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Methodology followed: Descriptive Research

Descriptive research includes surveys and fact-finding enquiries of different kinds. The major purpose of descriptive research is description of the state of affairs as it exists at present. The main characteristic of this method is that the researcher has no control over the variables; he can only report what has happened or what is happening. It attempts to discover causes even when they cannot control the variables!. This is the method we adopted to go ahead with the project

Phase 1: Secondary Data Collection

The first phase of the research project entailed collecting all Secondary Data related to the field of construction industry. This led us to deduce