New Delhi: The Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) III measures were implemented in Delhi on Friday (November 6) and with that, construction work was halted in the national capital. Daily-wage construction workers say they now face days of uncertaintly and lack of income.Since no subsistence allowance has been announced by the government so far, they face an especially precarious situation. Workers The Wire spoke to said they faced a double whammy – first doing construction work in heavily polluted conditions without protections, then being deprived even of essentials like food when the government decides to fight the pollution.Workers and union leaders point to four problems of the workers: first, their economic hardships as a result of workers’ dependence on daily earnings; second, weeks or months of no pay stretch before them; three, most workers are not registered and so they are unlikely to qualify for compensation for wage days lost.Fourth, even those who are registered with the government (via a website) say they had to pay bribes to receive their mandated allowance last year. What is worse, the new official website has kept workers from registering or renewing their cards for months.The economic costWhile explaining how little cushion daily-wage labourers have, Ranjan, 28, who has been living in Delhi for seven years with his wife and two children, said, “Do you understand what daily wage means? We eat what we earn daily. We earn by standing at the labour chowk.”“If we get 500, we live on that 500. If we don’t, we go hungry. Where we work, that work itself has stopped, so how will the owner keep us or pay us? He’ll just say, “Brother, go home. When my work resumes, I’ll call you.”Ranjan pays Rs 4500 as rent and electricity charges each month.“Tell me, what happens to our daily expenses, our family expenses, our children’s food and our rations? We live here in Delhi with our families, and on top of that, there is children’s schooling, food, room rent, even buying drinking water. Now the government has stopped work, so how will we run our homes? We’re getting by on loans from relatives and friends, borrowing from here and there for ration and water. But how long can that last?”Harinder, also a construction worker, lives in Delhi’s Janta Vihar. He has been living in the capital city since 1999, with his four kids. He said, “We are from Bhojpur in Bihar and it is the Chhath puja season for us. To do even the smallest of pujas, you need Rs 1,000. Where will we get that money from if we have not worked for the past five or six days?”Ranjan (left) and Harinder are construction workers in Delhi, currently out of work due to the GRAP 3 norms. Photo: Tarun Sahu, screenshot from video.He added, “As labourers, should we think about performing the puja right now, or feeding our children or should we think about going back home? And even to go home, only AC class tickets are available, not normal tickets,” he says.“You [the government] did not ban Diwali crackers, but you stopped our work,” he says, pointing out that the biggest source of recent pollution was not controlled, leading to the current crisis.So how will Delhi’s poor get home?“The chief minister and the Delhi government need to think about this. We are people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Where will they go, how will they live? It is the government’s responsibility.”Rajkishore Singh, an ageing worker said, “I have not eaten in three days, I have only fed my wife and children. I am so old and at this age I cannot learn do any other work, this [construction] is all I know.”Rajkishore Singh, an ageing worker, says he has no way to feed his family with building and construction work halted due to GRAP – 3 being in force.Most workers are outside the systemDelhi had around 10.04 lakh construction workers as of May 2022, according to a report by the Hindu. As of November 2026, just about 2.15 lakh workers have an active labour card, according to the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board’s website.The two figures for the strength of Delhi’s labour force are vastly different, yet they cite the same source – the DBOCWW. There was an unexplained steep fall in the number of construction workers in 2022, as the Hindu had reported: Their numbers fell to around 1.02 lakh in October – a drop of 89.8% since May that year.This suggests that a large majority of workers are outside the registered system on which welfare payments depend. Ranjan says this exclusion is unfair: “Those who don’t have a labour card, won’t you count them as workers?” he said.An allowance that did not arriveIn 2025, the Supreme Court directed the governments of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan to pay a subsistence allowance to construction workers left out of work by GRAP-3 restrictions.Also read: ‘Natural Calamity’ Status for Heatwaves Shields the State, Leaves Labourers OutsideWorkers say that this relief did not reach them. “Last time, when there was a labour cut-off, the government announced compensation, but we didn’t get it,” Ranjan said. “There was open corruption. We were told, ‘Pay a bribe and then you’ll get the money.’ Our union had at least 100 to 150 people standing there, and only 15 got paid. What will the rest do?”He said the government had then promised to “verify” whether workers had actually lost work before paying. “You are the government. When you yourselves shut the work down, what is there to verify?”Apoorva, a trade union activist from AICCTU, said the process was easier under the previous Delhi government, when all registered workers received an allowance. The current government, she said, requires even registered workers to verify that they were not currently doing construction work.This, she said, opened the door to bribery. Many workers, she alleged, paid Rs 2,000 to 3000 to receive the Rs 10,000 allowance. She said her trade union received such reports from all the districts of Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).A website that locked workers outUnion leaders and workers also criticised the present government’s decision to replace the Labour Welfare Board’s old website with a new one.For the last five months, almost right after the new site went live, they said, new workers could not register and existing ones could not renew their labour cards. A lapsed card, workers said, can mean losing eligibility for benefits.A screenshot of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board’s website for Delhi. Run by the Labour Department, workers have complained that it does not work, not allowing them to register. As on November 11 at 9 pm, the site shows only about 2.15 lakh registered workers.Fears of a wider falloutWorkers also spoke of a wider social cost of the anti-pollution measures – social instability would rise. “The other day, while I was riding my bike from Jafrabad, a boy snatched a phone from a passer-by and ran off,” Ranjan said. “This is what will happen: theft and robbery will increase in Delhi. When hunger comes, people will turn to crime.”He added that most labourers would not take such desperate routes. “A labourer won’t do it, because there’s a fear inside him. But nobody can work on an empty stomach. Suppose there is nothing to eat in our house. How many days can we depend on relatives?”Protest against the Welfare BoardOn October 15 the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) called building workers to protest outside Vikas Bhawan-2, in Civil Lines, north Delhi, demanding compensation for the construction workers before the end of November.The workers also demanded that camps should be set up to register and renew labour cards issued by the Labour Welfare Board. They also demanded an end to the corruption in the process of receiving the compensation.Also read: How the Ones Who Built New Delhi Were Gradually Pushed OutShailendra Kumar Singh, secretary of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board addressed the protesters, saying that staff shortages were hindering the smooth functioning of the board. He said he had raised this issue with the government.He said a camp for the registration and renewal of registration for workers would be held at the Welfare Board, and assured that officials who sought bribes from them would face investigations.However, Apoorva of AICCTU told The Wire that none of these assurances had materialised on the ground – the workers left the meeting dissatisfied.