Abstract:
COVID-19 had a huge impact on the world, like the rest of the world Pakistan was hit
extremely hard by COVID-19 and the resulting Lockdowns. Pakistan is a developing
nation that has a large percentage of society belonging to the lower-income groups and thus
was most badly affected, among these groups are informal construction workers who were
severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping in view, the present study aims to
explore the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on informal construction workers and
their families. Furthermore, the satisfaction level among these workers toward the
Government’s response in tackling the COVID-19 crisis was also explored. A 7-part 74-
question questionnaire was developed, and Surveys were conducted, a total of 353
responses were collected from informal construction workers, the majority of whom were
laborers. Descriptive analysis was performed using SPSS and results were obtained. The
results show that the average income of construction workers was Rs 16342 before the
lockdowns, which was less than the average monthly income in Pakistan, The majority of
the laborers 74.9% were sole earners of the family, and it was found that 60.6% of them
were unemployed for up to six months during the pandemic with 32.4% having no income
source at all, they were hit hard financially and many of them took loans to survive which
many still owe, results show that construction was closed. There was the unavailability of
Construction Materials and Tools, results show that 84.5 % of the laborers were vaccinated,
and that 79.6% of the respondents did not receive any financial assistance from the
Government. Still, overall, they were satisfied with the Government's response to COVID19. PHQ-9 results show that 31.5% of the laborers had mild whereas 30.9% had moderate
depression and GAD-7 shows 39.7% mild and 20.4% moderate Depression.
