SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND MENTAL HEALTH IMPACT OF COVID19 ON INFORMAL CONSTRUCTION WORKERS AND THEIR SATISFACTION LEVEL TOWARD THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO COVID-19

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.