PESHAWAR, Dec 18: Skilled workers from Frontier are leaving the province in droves to work in Afghanistan and earn better wages. The workers feel comfortable there because they are being paid in US dollars in Kabul and Khost. At present, there are 40,000 Pakistanis in Kabul alone, whereas some 30,000 are working in Khost,” said Abdul Bari, a mason from Swat.

Shah Nawaz Khan, a cement supplier, said Mr Karzai’s coming to power in Afghanistan was a blessing in disguise for the Pakistan-based building contractors.

He said “there has been a sudden boom” in the construction industry in Kabul.

“We supply cement to Afghanistan for which we receive money in advance. We earn good profit despite the fact that we grease the palms of Afghan militiamen at various checkpoints before our supplies reach the Afghan capital,” Khan told this correspondent.

Cement is currently being imported in Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran. Several small cement production facilities exist there but they require a thorough revamp.

Labour recruiter Gul Nazir has also good reason to smile as business has never been this good for him. He recruits skilled construction workers and arranges their placement in Afghan building sites.

“The fact that Pakistani workers will be paid in US dollars is a huge attraction,” he says.

“Pakistani labour is cheap. So both contractors and workers earn a sizable sum,” he adds.

Nazir said foreign companies leading the Afghan reconstruction effort “are paying workers in cash”. In Pakistan, companies do not always make payments on time, he points out.

Among the most sought-after construction workers in Afghanistan are masons, carpenters, electricians and crane operators.

During the 26 years of warfare, Afghan provinces such as Kabul, Kandahar, Bamiyan and Balkh were virtually destroyed, requiring a huge rebuilding effort.

Gul Wali, an Afghan contractor who migrated to Pakistan 20 years ago, started his career as a mason. He said that he went back to Kabul after Karzai won the October elections and started his own construction business there.

“I hired the services of 150 Pakistani masons in Kabul. Only 22 of them have passports, while the rest are working on my personal guarantee,” he added.

Wali went on to say that his Pakistani workers got paid 10 to 15 US dollars a day, which was much more than what they earned back home.

“In Pakistan, they get an equivalent of two dollars a day. And there is no guarantee they would get work every day. There are days when they just sit idle,” he said. “In Afghanistan, there is ample work for everyone. There, it is a question of finding enough people.”