As India proceeds with Unlock 1.0 to reopen the economy, the country is facing a labour shortage as migrant workers have left the cities for their hometowns.

According to reports, among sectors, construction and real estate face a 52 percent worker shortage, followed by manufacturing (44 percent) and pharmaceuticals (42 percent).

Talking about regions, heavily migrant dependent south India is struggling.

Even as Larsen and Toubro (L&T) is looking to re-start work at its construction sites with the easing of the lockdown, India’s largest engineering and construction firm is facing acute shortage of labour as over one lakh workers — almost half its labour — have gone to their homes in U.P., Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa during the lockdown.

Talking about the crisis, S N Subrahmanyan, MD and CEO, L&T, told media, “We had 2.25 lakh labourers working with us pre-Covid; now we have 1.2 lakh people with us. We need to get back one lakh people to resume operations.”

“We expect most of the labourers to come back by the end of this month. Our project teams are tapping labourers returning to India from the Middle East due to job losses there,” he said.

Facing acute labour shortage, Indian companies are now setting up hostel and health facilities, and offering insurance cover to blue-collar workers at their plants/construction sites.

Some consumer products makers such as Dabur, Parle Products, and PepsiCo have turned to local people in the absence of migrant labourers. Dabur, for instance, has transportation service for workers to and from its 11 manufacturing sites. Housing has been provided for some workers near manufacturing plants.

Millions of workers in India were stranded in large cities following the lockdowns imposed by the government from late March onward. Many chose to walk home and have not been back to work.