Low supply of skilled manpower may delay projects
The flooding in the Central region including metropolitan Bangkok has caused a labour shortage as the property sector needs skilled workers to continue project construction and to renovate damaged homes.
According to a survey by The Nation of leading property and contracting firms, the low supply of skilled labour will delay delivery of homes in residential projects to their customers.
Raimon Land chief executive Hubert Viriot said the company had faced a labour shortage amounting to about 7 per cent of its demand for construction of residential projects since last month. However, the company believes labourers will return to the market in December, and construction will go ahead normally.
LPN Development managing director Opas Sripayak said some of its construction would not meet its schedule because the company has set up a system to help its customers survive the flood crisis since last month.
However, the company already is returning to normal as its labourers have come back to work, he said.
Homebuilder Four Pattana Co’s managing director, Pramote Teerakul, said the labour shortage was not due to the floods alone. The market has faced this problem since early in the year, as demand for more construction projects outstripped the supply of workers.
Meanwhile, the demand for construction labour will rise when homeowners who faced floods need renovation work done. This will have an impact on the labour market into the first quarter of next year, he said.
Thai Contractors Association president Polpat Karnasuta said contractors had faced a worker shortage since early this year when the government put limits on foreign labour, while the number of construction projects was rising. This situation was made worse when the floods hit as workers went to their home provinces to protect their homes.
“The country faced a shortage of more than 200,000 labourers when compared with the number of construction projects,” he said.
He agreed that the demand for labour to renovate flooddamaged homes would also have an impact. However, the association has asked the Labour Department to import foreign labour to support the demand in the market, he said.
According to a survey by the Real Estate Information Centre two weeks ago, 700,000 residential units in metropolitan Bangkok had sustained flood damage, 100,000 of which were in projects built by property firms and the rest built privately by landowners.
