The prescribed working hours for construction workers are 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week. This is according to the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996. This information is so readily available on the internet that one doesn’t even have to dig through the constitution for it. Then why is it that when buildings and homes are being constructed in residential areas, the work starts at 6:00 am, when the sun’s barely out, and continues throughout the day, hours after the sun has set? Anyone should be able to see that 6:00 am to 8:00 pm is 14 hours. 6 hours more work than the prescribed 8 hours. If this information is so readily available on the internet, is it not the responsibility of a person who is getting a home built to know that them making construction workers do their job for more than 8 hours is not just highly unethical but also against the law? This means that the employers, whom I doubt are unaware of this rule of the Department of Labour, are brutally exploiting these workers.
It is not just about everyone in the area having to listen to the sound of drilling and granite being cut long after it is supposed to stop, and on a Sunday. It is about the living and working conditions of the people who, day and night, spend their time in an environment so harsh that their bodies may be harmed permanently. I do not think I have to spell out the adverse effects of the pollution a construction job generates. And all of this, because someone wants a house to be built as fast as possible with no regard to the well-being of the persons employed under them or the people living in the area where that home is being built.
The people who work for such projects are contract workers, often migrants, and people who travel from rural lands to urban forests for money, and so for the period they are doing the work, they have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and money to send back home. It makes me incredibly sad to know that they have to put up with such inhumane working conditions to earn meagre wages, which, in today’s economy, don’t get you all that much.
And I think to myself, what can I do in this situation, when I have to hear drilling at 10:30 pm, when I am on the verge of going to bed, and in the early hours of the day, which is usually the quietest time of the day, but be upset with the employers, because telling the workers to not do work after a point is useless, as they will do so anyways, because it is the wish of the person paying them. What does it matter that then, it disturbs all the people living in that area, what does it matter, that working at night in low light isn’t safe, what does anything matter, in the face of money?
