Utilize BOCW Funds For Labourers, CREDAI Maharashtra Urges CM Uddhav Thackeray

Pune, 12th April 2021: The Maharashtra government has collected about Rs 10,225 crore through Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) in the last six years and used only 8% of it for the welfare of the workers as per the data available on Maharashtra BOCW website. We request the Chief Minister to look into these cases and provide at least Rs 5,000 from the BOCW account to the construction workers, demanded Sunil Furde, President-CREDAI Maharashtra. BOCW Cess is levied at 1% on the cost of construction incurred by developers.

“In the wake of the second wave of the corona, reverse migration of workers has already begun in large numbers due to uncertainty in their jobs and health scare. 

It will have a very huge negative impact on the construction industry that is totally dependent on them for meeting deadlines of RERA, banks and customers.

Without a proper labour force developers will have to stop construction activities, resulting in accumulated losses and interests.

Also, multiple legal cases in RERA cannot be ruled out, opined Furde.

“Last year during pandemic construction was halted for about 2.5 months and after restarting took us more than 6 months to get proper labour force. RERA extended the deadline by only 6 months whereas developers lost more than 8-9 months. This year again if there is attrition and reverse migration of labour then the construction industry will see its worst times. 

We developers from CREDAI Maharashtra are already doing our best by providing free vaccinations, proper sanitizing of labour camps, toilets, taking care of their health and hygiene requirements similar like we did last year during lockdown. But this is not enough. We urge the Govt and the Hon CM to extend its full support to the workers”, he added.