We have seen erosion of labour of 40-50% on all our sites: Dilip Buildcon

We have still managed to make 50% to70% progress on all the projects as we have our own employees and equipment, says Rohan Suryavanshi, Head, Strategy & Planning.

Start off by telling us about the lost revenues in Q4 and Q1 FY21 due to the lockdown and give us an insight as to where they are headed?
The Q4 was alright except the last 14 days, which got impacted. But we were able to post decent revenues. Now in Q1 obviously because of the government lockdown, there have been a lot of challenges. The government did try to set up start sites periodically in different parts and even we have started work on all our sites. While the work has started, the progress has obviously been hit and we are doing about 50% to 70% of what we would have done in the usual time. But we have put in SOP that all our sites and all our employees are maintaining social distancing norms. While they are doing so, there is a whole set of new rules and regulations that we are following and we are trying to do a decent job in these tough times.

Can you just elaborate a little bit more about what are the SOPs that have been put into place and how you plan to restart things again in a calibrated fashion? I am sure there are a lot of challenges that are cropping up. Can you tell us about that?
There are a lot of challenges because initially nobody had any clue; neither the government on how to restart things. There were different opinions and decisions coming in from different districts and at different government levels. The centre was doing something and the state had a different opinion and the district administration had a different opinion. So there was a lot of confusion. But eventually the sites got started.

The first challenge that we faced was around the supply chain because everything had been shut for so long that the supply chain was all over the place. Even when the supply chain restarted, the transportation of those goods back to sites was a challenge. Eventually when the government came out with the order that they wanted to take back the migrant population to their effective states, that impacted the labour.

So right now, while the supply chain and the transportation has been taken care of more or less, the biggest issue that remains at all the sites is obviously the challenge of labour. We have seen erosion of labour of almost 40-50% less from the original number. But given that we have our own employees and our own equipment, we still managed to make 50% to70% progress on all the projects that I mentioned.

I also wanted to understand how big a problem do you think the entire labour issue is. Do you expect all these issues to be resolved amicably or do you think this is going to be a long impending one?
That is a very good point you have raised because monsoons are around the corner and for our sector and our industry, this is a season where we all see a hit on our revenue. So the season before that is always the season, which is the first quarter, where we try to build enough dry powder so that it can tide us over the monsoon season. But right now, obviously this first quarter has obviously taken a hit but going forward, labour not just for our industry but for other industries also will be a challenge primarily because most of the labour has taken a lot of hardships to get back to their home towns or their villages and they are not in any hurry to come back. They are all a little scared because so much has been written about the coronavirus. It has got a certain amount of fear psychosis amongst all classes and I think we will definitely see labour impacted for the next couple of months as well.