Hyderabad: The Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) project has encountered a strange problem.
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) officials reported that about 60 per cent of the labourers hailing from Odisha and West Bengal who went back home to cast their votes hadn’t returned to duty since the Lok Sabha polls.
Despite repeated reminders, labourers claimed that they will only be ready to resume in June.
Parliamentary elections were held in four phases in Odisha and seven phases in West Bengal. Many construction workers went back to exercise their franchise in the first week of April but haven’t reported back to resume their duties. As a result, the project has fallen short of at least 60 per cent manpower at each site, which has further impacted its progress.
GHMC officials explained that the worker migration issue had come as a boon for the contractors engaged in the execution of the project and a bane for the civic body, which has been facing very harsh criticism for the delay in completion of the project.
Corporation staff said that contractors were in no hurry to bring back the labourers as there was already a backlog of payments and delay in land acquisition.
