SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The two-month na­tion­al lock­down en­forced by the Gov­ern­ment on May 3 as a mea­sure to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus has ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the State’s hous­ing pro­gramme with pro­jec­tions for 1,800 hous­ing units by the end of 2021 now be­ing scaled back to 1,000 units.

Hun­dreds of con­struc­tion work­ers are sched­uled to re­sume work this morn­ing at pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor projects that had been put on hold due to the re­stric­tions im­posed by the Gov­ern­ment.

While the green light was giv­en by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day for the con­struc­tion sec­tor to re­sume op­er­a­tions along with hard­ware, sup­ply stores and quar­ries, pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh has ex­pressed con­cerns that it will not be smooth sail­ing for some of his mem­bers who have been bat­tling an in­crease in build­ing ma­te­ri­als, high­er ship­ping costs, lack of for­eign ex­change and monies owed to them by the State for ser­vices pro­vid­ed.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to sev­er­al What­sApp ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia about the state of HDC’s readi­ness to restart work on var­i­ous hous­ing projects across the coun­try, its man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dike Noel ad­mit­ted “the re­stric­tions which were im­ple­ment­ed as a re­sult of the in­crease in COVID-19 cas­es in May af­fect­ed the State con­struc­tion sec­tor, in­clud­ing HDC projects. As such, a to­tal of

How­ev­er, Noel, said, “At the start of the year, the HDC pro­ject­ed to com­plete 1,800 units. How­ev­er, due to the re­stric­tions and sub­se­quent shut­down, the HDC has re­vised this fig­ure to 1,000 units for 2021.”

Noel said the HDC an­tic­i­pates that as soon as con­trac­tors for these projects have fi­nalised their re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tion pro­to­cols work should re­sume.

De­light­ed the con­struc­tion in­dus­try has fi­nal­ly been giv­en clear­ance to restart work, Ma­habirs­ingh said it’s go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult road ahead for those in­volved in the sec­tor based on a num­ber of on­go­ing is­sues.

The eight weeks con­trac­tors were pro­hib­it­ed from work­ing, Ma­habirs­ingh said a lot hap­pened.

Apart from los­ing in­come, Ma­habirs­ingh said some con­trac­tors were sad­dled with ad­di­tion­al costs.

Heavy rain­fall has led to sev­er­al con­struc­tion sites ei­ther be­ing flood­ed out or col­lect­ed wa­ter that had to be pumped out.

The el­e­ments al­so de­pre­ci­at­ed the val­ue of some heavy ma­chin­ery and equip­ment.

“One cost would have been se­cu­ri­ty be­cause sites with ma­te­ri­als would have had to be se­cured and pro­tect­ed. Those costs with the re­sump­tion on Ju­ly 5, most con­trac­tors would en­gage with their clients to dis­cuss those di­rect costs they would have in­curred. Some rea­son­able ne­go­ti­a­tions would take place in terms of com­pen­sat­ing or mit­i­gat­ing against those di­rect costs.”

Mah­birs­ingh said the sec­tor em­ploys over 50,000 work­ers and has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 small, medi­um and large con­trac­tors.

TTCA has a mem­ber­ship of 83.

Yes­ter­day, Ma­habirs­ingh said con­trac­tors were busi­ly en­gaged in zoom meet­ings with their man­agers, teams and em­ploy­ees to re­sume work.

With work be­hind sched­ule, Ma­habirs­ingh said, many projects would have to be ac­cel­er­at­ed which would re­quire con­trac­tors to call out ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er or ex­tend work hours to meet dead­lines.

“With two months be­ing off the sites, there is a lot of catch­ing up and re­cov­ery work to be done. It will be chal­leng­ing for some of them tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the rains will slow down work.”

Re­gard­ing mil­lions of dol­lars owed to con­trac­tors, Ma­habirs­ingh said, this was one is­sue TTCA has raised with the Gov­ern­ment.

“We have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the rel­e­vant arms in state en­ter­prise. We un­der­stand that there is some lev­el of pay­ments that are be­ing made to fa­cil­i­tate the restart of con­struc­tion.”

Ma­habirs­ingh could not quan­ti­fy the pay­ments made so far.

“It’s is dif­fi­cult to say. Firms would in­di­cate when they do not get pay. They hard­ly in­di­cate when they get pay.”

Even though the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change for con­trac­tors has been a nag­ging is­sue, Ma­habirs­ingh said, this mat­ter was al­so dis­cussed with the Gov­ern­ment.

“The in­dus­try is aware of the sit­u­a­tion.”

He said some con­trac­tors have re­sort­ed to us­ing lo­cal ma­te­ri­als and man­pow­er to cut back on the de­mands on for­eign ex­change.

On the heels of this is­sue an­oth­er sur­faced, Ma­habirs­ingh said, con­trac­tors had to deal with an uptick in in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping costs on con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

“In­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping costs kin­da trumps the for­eign ex­change.”

Ma­habirs­ingh said im­port­ing such ma­te­ri­als from Eu­rope, Chi­na and North Amer­i­can has been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult in the last few weeks.

“On a 40-foot con­tain­er, the price moved from US$2,500 to the vicin­i­ty of US$10,000 which re­al­ly in­creas­es the price of what­ev­er ma­te­ri­als be­ing im­port­ed in those con­tain­ers. Two of the big-tick­et items which we saw a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in are lum­ber and steel....and they are still in­creas­ing on a week­ly ba­sis.”

Ma­habirs­ingh said such costs were out­side of the coun­try’s con­trols but would have a rip­pling ef­fect on con­sumers.

“We are a small play­er in a big in­dus­try. We need to keep our eyes on that sit­u­a­tion.”

Ma­habirs­ingh plead­ed with con­trac­tors to be in­no­v­a­tive and to think out­side of the box, stat­ing that the road ahead will be dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate.

Bali­ram John, group mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Bhag­wans­ingh Group of Com­pa­nies, said he had no doubt that the clo­sure of the sec­tor has re­sult­ed in busi­ness­es los­ing mil­lions of dol­lars.

“It had a se­ri­ous im­pact on us, “John ad­mit­ted, stat­ing that they did not re­trench any of its 500 staff mem­bers dur­ing the sec­ond lock­down.

All Bhag­wans­ingh and Dansteel’s lo­ca­tions were closed dur­ing the re­stric­tions but re­cent­ly opened three days a week when the mea­sures were re­cent­ly re­laxed.

As the coun­try’s lead­ing hard­ware, John said 80 per cent of Bhag­wans­ingh and Dansteel sales go to­wards con­struc­tion.

Dur­ing the mea­sures, John said, the com­pa­ny had to find mon­ey to pay for im­ports.

Ob­tain­ing for­eign ex­change, he said, was their num­ber one headache.

“We have a team of peo­ple who li­aise with the banks on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

He said the com­pa­ny has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a short­age of for­eign ex­change for years.

“It has ham­pered busi­ness. It is dif­fi­cult. Some­times we have to pur­chase Eu­ros and use that to pay for US dol­lars....so you find that you lose ten per cent when you buy the Eu­ros.”

John said while they have been ex­port­ing some ma­te­ri­als “the quan­tum is mi­nus­cule in terms of what our re­quire­ments are. A ship­ment of steel that they use in con­struc­tion could re­quire US$10 mil­lion. It’s a huge in­vest­ment. It is dif­fi­cult to get the quan­tum you need.”

On a pos­i­tive note, John said the com­pa­ny has suf­fi­cient in­ven­to­ry to sup­ply con­trac­tors and cus­tomers for a while.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said last week his min­istry got per­mis­sion from the Health Min­istry to re­sume con­struc­tion on key projects.

“Start­ing a project in a pan­dem­ic is not just telling the con­trac­tors they can go out and work. The con­trac­tors have to eval­u­ate the job sites. They have to sub­mit to us the health pro­to­cols. All of that was done last week so we ex­pect from Mon­day those con­trac­tors will be ready to hit the ground run­ning.”

He said the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture and De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny will dis­patch let­ters to the re­main­ing con­trac­tors in­form­ing them they can restart work pro­vid­ing that all health guide­lines are ad­hered to on job sites.

“The con­struc­tion sec­tor is what we are us­ing to stim­u­late the econ­o­my,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan’s min­istry is head­ing sev­er­al de­vel­op­men­tal projects such as the $180 mil­lion Diego Mar­tin In­ter­change, San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way, Cu­mu­to High­way, Moru­ga Port and To­ba­go Air­port, in­clud­ing bridges, drainage and road pro­grammes.