The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian Contractors Association (BCA) is developing a database of construction firms and skilled workers to ensure Bahamians do not miss out on a building boom, its president said yesterday.

Michael Pratt told Tribune Business that the absence of such information, detailing the qualifications Bahamian contractors and tradesmen possess, the scope of work they can perform and whether they are available, meant he and the BCA are “not certain at this point exactly who we do have available” to meet the demands of both foreign development projects and post-Dorian reconstruction.

“What we are doing right now is we are building our database to be able to answer that properly, and we have a lot of contractors right now registering on our database and registering their skill sets,” Mr Pratt said. He added that the BCA would be a position to say how many contractors and workers are ready and able to work in a matter of weeks.

The BCA chief spoke out after Elsworth Johnson, minister of financial services, trade and Immigration, responded to recent concerns voiced over the Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club’s plans to import 135 Mexican construction workers by suggesting that The Bahamas simply “doesn’t have the volume of workers” to meet the project’s demands and those of other investors.

Acknowledging this issue, Mr Pratt said: “We recognise that a lot of our people have been relocated after the storms. They have gone to other islands, and especially Nassau. Some of them have gotten involved in other jobs and some of them still sit unemployed. But the problem we have is getting a collective database so everyone can know what’s going on.”

Revealing that the BCA is working with the Ministry of Labour to construct this database, Mr Pratt added: “Hopefully when people apply they can call us and, from our database, we can speak quickly to who we have available.”

Mr Johnson, meanwhile, addressing concerns over Baker’s Bay’s demand for foreign construction workers, said: “We only want fit and proper persons to come into The Bahamas. There is a due diligence that we go through to see whether or not we have the necessary skill sets to do the work. In the initial phase I know that they are bringing in their technocrats to see how they can rebuild the facility. They have said to us that within a year to a year-and-a-half they are going to have Baker’s Bay up and running.”

Suggesting that post-Dorian rebuilding, together with recently-announced investment projects, meant that The Bahamas was on the verge of a “construction boom”, Mr Johnson said: “With the reconstruction of Abaco, with the agreement we just signed on Monday with Royal Caribbean and Carnival, we are saying to Bahamians to come forward and let us know what you are able to do.

“Take your information to the employment exchange so that when applications are made they can be dealt with justly. At the end of the day, with the volume of work that we have to do, I don’t know with a 400,000 population - some old, some are senior, some are young - whether or not we have the population to rebuild with the speed that the investors are saying they want to build at.

“Carnival and Royal Caribbean are suggesting to us that by 2021, 2022 they want to be up and running,” Mr Johnson added. “I want to reassure the Bahamian public that the government will not allow Bahamians to be displaced, but we must come to grips with the idea that with the volume of work we have to do, I don’t know that we have the mass to deal with it.”

The BCA’s Mr Pratt told Tribune Business: “We have been hearing about not having a massive amount of skills sets for years in The Bahamas. That’s why a lot of people have been allowed to come in and do their different projects on their own. We are trying to counteract that now by letting them know who we have available, where they are and what education and skill-set they have.”

He added that the BCA also wants to provide contractors with “short skills through different certification programmes”, and said: “We are going to certify them in certain speciality areas, because this seems to be the trend now. So we can also say that we have these people available and they also do have the special skills that you are looking for.”