Jaiwal Building Services company owner Jaiswal Prakash has been greatly affected by the second wave of COVID-19 as major sectors across the country have been placed in an indefinite hold.
Mr Prakash is a roofing contractor who specialises with roofing and with the containment restrictions in place he along with his staff cannot return to work.
“The way we are affected is basically the workers are in lockdown in their own containment area such as the Lami area and 9 miles onwards,” he said.
“They can’t travel and most of these workers basically travel in the bus and again it’s a risk for them too.”
He said the whole industry was suffering as the hardware shops were closed which meant they had no access to supplies and restrictions on movement resulting in workers not being able to travel.
“There is a risk to even attend to any urgent jobs. People may not be that keen to have visitors or anybody in their compound because of the COVID reasons.”
Mr Prakash said they normally had five people working for them but it all depended on the type of projects they got contracted to.
He said for bigger projects they would have 20 people, however for now their staff were on leave without pay.
“I am aware of their situations at home and basically the company is assisting them. “Unfortunately most of these people don’t have a bank account so how can we transfer the funds.
“So simply I had to close the business for the many period now for these many days.”
Mr Prakash added they would work on one project at a time. For now since he is staying at home he is involved in his backyard gardening and keeps busy with that.
“I got a farm up in Navua and unfortunately I can’t travel, only thing was that I had sorted out the seedlings,” he said.
He added there was a lot of potential in the agriculture sector which is something he would like to explore in the future.
