Hyderabad: Borewell drilling hit hard by labour crunch

Hyderabad: The Covid-19 pandemic has hit hard the borewell digging services due to lockdown and shortage of workers in the city and surrounding areas.

"Residents generally hire borewell drilling services to dig deep in the earth to harness the ground water for domestic and commercial use or overhaul the existing bore wells during peak summer season. However, this time we aren't receiving any such requests due to pandemic," informed Ramesh, proprietor, Balaji Bore Well Services.

"Requests for hiring drilling machines has significantly dropped down due to lockdown. Moreover, it has become difficult to offer the services as large number of labourers have gone their native places," said Prabhakar Reddy, owner of a bore well drilling machine.

Explaining that shortage of labour force has a bearing on their business besides the lockdown restrictions, he said "Borewell drilling works largely depends on workers, without whom it is impossible to execute the works."

"People are unable to book borewell services for digging of new ones or repairing the existing bores due to lockdown," said Kamalakar Jitender, a resident of Attapur.

 "We are diligently using borewells these days as any negligence could result in breakdown of motors and pump sets. This would put us in worse situation as there is no services of borewell digging or repairs due to lockdown," said Mushtaq Mirza, a resident in red zone.