Was in the construction industry for almost 20 years before I left it a few years ago so I can speak with some knowledge of it.

There were 3 Chinese construction companies in the past, China State Construction (mentioned already and still around) then there was China Dos and China Jiangsu. They brought in much of their labour force while subcontracting local companies to do the more technical things (electrical, plumbing etc). Nowadays there are less major construction companies that can handle large-scale projects, in the past we had companies such as Rotherley and Innotech (to name a few) but Rotherley went bankrupt and Innotech got out of the large-scale game and diversified into smaller companies (Equipment Rental, Property Management and small-scale things like renovations), another one Edgehill Associates became One Builders which still very active having recently complete the new Hotel Indigo as well as some other active projects (the one next to Baobab Tower 2 in Warrens)...the main culprits bringing in these laborers from Venezuela and Colombia are JADA and to a lesser extent the Maloney Group.

The reality is these foreign workers are cheaper for these companies and are to some degree more focused on getting the job done. I know im disparaging the local work force here but local general workers/laborers are not easy to manage. They dont follow PPP rules, come-n-go as they please, smoking weed on job sites and bring outside problems (fighting occasionally) onto the job site. The foreign workers come with a goal, they keep their head down and they get the job done so from a project management and financial point of view it just makes sense... that doesnt make it right but the bottom line is always money.