Afghani Contractors

Contractors in Afghanistan are not the same as US Contractors, you probably already figured that out from my other postings. More examples of how they differ, the Afghani men we work with on the crews are very meek and low key, they don't get excited or worked up about anything. The contractors do not get upset when we tell them they can't work that day or we don't have something ready, it's not the microwave society of the US. They just say, "no problem" and go about their business. When we have a small change in the contract, they do it without asking for a price increase. When something isn't as it is shown in the contract plans, they don't ask for more money, they just make the change and go on.

The workers are very eager to learn, for the most part. I have noticed some that just don't like to work, we have those every where you go. But, when I go out to visit the job site, I feel like a movie star. When I show up, I search for the one guy on the crew that speaks English. When I find him and start talking, many of the workers gather around and try to figure out what we are talking about. One day I took a new drawing out to the road project and I think every worker on the site gathered around when I pulled the paper out. They all wanted to see what was on the paper. They are also a very friendly group, my visit starts with a handshake or wave and a smile from every one of the workers I walk by and then the same when I leave the work site.

The other thing we have noticed, from day one, there is no OSHA in Afghanistan. These contractors get away with things here that would bankrupt contractors in the states after OSHA levies their fines for safety violations. You can see some of these violations in the pictures above. The traffic control tower was started before we got here, it is a 4-story structure. In the picture the workers are installing the roof, corrugated metal, without being tied off and no safety landing at the edge of the roof. The other day, the guys on the top floor were chucking wood scraps over the side, when another worker stepped out of the door at the ground level. The wood missed him by less than a foot. This got him pretty excited and he started yelling at the guys up top. Note, they do not wear hard hats.

In another of the pictures, a local contractor is taking down a guard tower with a crane. In the picture one of the workers is riding the crane to the top of the tower to connect the cable to the top of the tower. To make matters more interesting the person taking the picture asked him to wave, so he is only hanging on with one hand. And, this particular individual's nickname is "crazy eye", because he has one glass eye that doesn't follow what he is looking at.

Also, the quality of construction is not quite the same. We haven't determined yet, but the control tower sure looks like it is leaning, the "leaning tower of Salerno". We don't think it is, but I took a picture for the project manager to prove to him it was. I tilted the camera just a little to make it look like it was leaning in the picture. In the other picture, one of us noticed that the contractor had a little extra entrained air in his concrete soffitt on one of the new buildings. There was an empty plastic water bottle in the concrete and when we looked a little closer, we also notice a big chunk of cardboard in the concrete. The stucco finish will cover them.

I'm sure I'll have more for a later posting as we see new things every week.