As economic activities are rebounding slowly and steadily, workers who have long been without any job are getting back to work, paving the way for restoring their sources of income.

Due to the coronavirus, most of the development works of government and private projects became stalled, leaving millions of temporary construction workers without any work.
The government has been relaxing the lockdown measures to help reopen the country’s economy and protect income and jobs.

Due to the prolonged lockdown and static situation in economic activities, construction workers were among the worst-hit workforce.

Some 3.5 million workers of the construction sector had been sitting idle and struggling to survive this financial crisis caused by lack of work after the lockdown that halted all sorts of non-emergency development work.

Khandker Kingshuk Hossain, Chief Marketing Officer (Cement Sector) of Bashundhara Group,  said the construction sector is yet to resume activities at full scale.

“If the sector reopens, businesses will revive and economic activities will get pace and most importantly a large number of construction workers will get back their employment,” he added.

Majority of the construction workers belongs to the class of day labourers and depend on daily wages and workers in the informal sector have largely been ignored in government policies.
 According to the Labour Force Survey 2016-17, around 2.5 million workers are involved in the construction sector.

It has been learnt that development works of roads, highways, and major development projects have started on a limited scale across the country, allowing the temporary workers to get back to work after a long interval of unemployment.

Though the full pace of development yet to come, workers are happy to be able to get back to work.

Sagir Ahmed, a temporary construction worker mainly in development sites, said he had no work for four months amid the coronavirus crisis.

“No work means nothing to eat. Resume of economic activities has reopened our income source. Otherwise, survival would have been difficult for us,” he said.

Many workers said that most of the workers had to leave Dhaka as they had no job. Now, some are coming back to the city with reopening of development activities.

Thought it would take time to reopen all the economic activities at full pace, however, at least a portion is getting chance to work, they added.

The Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB) says the reopening of all kinds of development works both in government or private sector is needed to bring pace in the economic activities.