By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Government has granted China Construction America (CCA) 500 work permits for its The Pointe project, it was confirmed yesterday, and agreed that the workforce will only be 40 per cent Bahamian.

Leslie Pindling, CCA’s director of external affairs, said the Chinese state-owned contractor was almost at its ‘work permit’ limit, and the Bahamian labor force component exceeded what was in the project’s Heads of Agreement.

Mr Pindling, the son of the late Sir Lynden, said the construction workforce for the project adjacent to the British Colonial Hilton is presently 49 per cent Chinese, with Bahamians accounting for another 47 per cent. No mention was made of the nationalities of the remaining 4 per cent.

“With our Heads of Agreement, we have an agreement that there would be 40 per cent Bahamian labour and 60 per cent foreign labour,” Mr Pindling said.

“That is only for the start-up construction of what we call the ‘super structure’. The super structure would be the garage and the two hotels. Once those have been completed, then the dynamics in numbers would change because we need more Bahamians to do all the finishing work; maybe electrical, plumbing, dry wall. All of those finishings would be done by Bahamians.”

The level of participation by Bahamian contractors and construction workers at The Pointe has aroused particular controversy, given that most of the workforce appears to be Chinese.

Leonard Sands, the Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president, earlier this week described the issue as a constant source of “concern and frustration” for the Bahamian industry.

He recommended that Bahamians should be the majority of the workforce via a 60/40 split -the exact reversal of what the Christie administration negotiated in the project’s Heads of Agreement.

Mr Pindling said there are 321 Bahamians employed at The Pointe. “We have 321 Bahamians right now to 229 Chinese,” he added. “That is in conjunction with staff working on the property, and in conjunction with contractors and sub-contractors coming in.

“We anticipate hiring about 500 Bahamians for the entire property. That would be the marina, all the restaurants and bars, and the two properties. All the retail shops would be operated by Bahamians.”

Responding to concerns over the number of Chinese workers often visible on site, compared to Bahamians, Mr Pindling said: “We have an eight-foot fence. You can only see above that, so you don’t actually see the Bahamians on the ground level doing the other structural work.

“We will be increasing Bahamian employment and we continue through our construction phases.    

“We are allowed 500 work permits, and we are almost at that limit. That’s a cut-off point. The 500 where we are capped for now is just to build the superstructure itself, which will be the garage and the two hotels. There are no more work permits in order to construct.”

None of CCA’s senior Chinese executives were present for yesterday’s media tour of The Pointe. Tribune Business sources suggested they deliberately did not attend in order to avoid questions about recent revelations surrounding the company’s involvement with the $3.5 billion Baha Mar project (see other articles on Page 1B).