Bahamas Contractors Association (BCA) President, Leonard Sands responded to comments made by Prime Minister, the Hon. Philip Davis on amount of foreign workers in the construction industry due to the construction boom currently underway in the country.

Sands agreed with Mr. Davis’ comments saying, “if you said we had what we needed why would there be 14,000 plus people on work permit. And if out of the number of 14,000 persons with work permit, the last information I got was, at least seven to eight thousand of them are in construction.”

According to the BCA President there is a large number of unskilled labourers in the industry which should receive national focus. He said, “if we recognize that the persons are unskilled and active in the construction sector why couldn’t we just train Bahamians.”

Sands said there are ala number of unskilled persons who receive work permits from the Department of Labour. “While I believe that because of the activity in the sector, yeah, there’s a lot of construction going on and there’s a lot of need for labour, skilled and unskilled. But I think policy wise we need to look at the numbers in finite terms to determine where are those peaks coming from,” he said.