SN Subrahmanyan, the Chairman of construction giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T), who last month triggered a massive controversy with his 90-hour workweek comment, has blamed welfare schemes and comfort for labourers being unwilling to migrate for work.
Subrahmanyan on Tuesday said there is a shortage of labourers in the construction industry, as migrant workers who make up the bulk of the workforce are unwilling to move from one place to another.
He said that for the nation to grow, building infrastructure like roads and power plants is key, but it is becoming difficult because of the labour shortage.??
According to him, welfare programmes such as Jan Dhan accounts, direct benefit transfers, the Garib Kalyan Yojana, and the MGNREGA have provided financial stability and reduced the urgency for many workers to leave their hometowns for employment.
¡°We have to employ 4 lakh labourers, and the attrition rate is three to four times a year, so for employing 4 lakh labourers, we employ about 6 million,¡± Subrahmanyan said while speaking at the CII South Global Linkages summit in Chennai.
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He also added that people unwilling to relocate for work is not something limited to the construction industry, but even the tech sector faces the same challenge. Citing his own example of moving from Chennai to Delhi, Subrahmanyan said many wouldn't do it today.
¡°When I joined L&T in 1983, my boss said, if you are from Chennai, you go to Delhi and work. Today, if I take a guy from Chennai and tell him to go to Delhi and work, he says bye,¡± he said.
Subrahmanyan noted that remote working is a change that senior leadership in his generation is still getting used to.
¡°If you tell him to come to the office and work, he says bye. And that's a different world altogether. Therefore, it is a funny world which we are trying to live in, and many of us wearing slightly more white hair are trying to understand it. We have to see how to live with this world and have policies which are flexible to understand all this and take it forward,¡± he said.
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