By NNN-Xinhua,
Dhaka : More than 2 million construction workers in Bangladesh have been affected as price hike of mild steel (MS) rod, brick and cement has slowed down the pace of building work in the country.
“In 2006, the Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh(REHAB) members constructed 7,000 apartment units. It fell to just3,500 units in 2007 affecting more than 2 million construction workers,” said Tanveerul Haque Probal, president REHAB.
Probal said, “the job crisis has been prevailing since the beginning of last winter when only a small number of residential and commercial buildings were under construction because of soaring prices of construction materials.”
In the past one week, the prices of finer quality rod ranged between 70,000 to 72,000 taka (1,000 U.S. dollars to 1,030 U.S. dollars) a ton, up from around 40,000 taka (571 U.S. dollars) in January.
Average price of a sac of cement is now 350 taka (7 U.S. dollars) but it was 240 taka (3.4 U.S. dollars) about a year ago.
The work on hundreds of under-construction private houses and commercial buildings across the country has been stalled or slowed down due to the recent price hike of the construction materials, according to some real estate developers.