How overseas recruitment is helping rebuild Christchurch

In the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake it became apparent that the labour requirement wouldn't able to be fulfilled by local workers, so Leighs Construction looked overseas to counter the problem.

Six years on, around $30 billion has been spent on the rebuild, with the New Zealand government estimating that 63% of the large-scale repair job completed.

Recognising that the number of local labourers wouldn't be enough to complete the rebuild, companies such as Leighs Construction turned their attention to offshore workers - implementing a competitive recruitment process in the Philippines.

Anthony Leighs, Managing Director, gave insight as to how his company enlisted Filipino employees.

"We actually take New Zealand tools that we use up to the Philippines," Mr Leighs told SBS.

"We lease a workshop facility up there and we literally give the people a plan and say 'there's a plan of a carpentry project, you've got three-quarters of an hour, there are the tools, there are the materials, go away and build it."

Currently, they employ 90 Filipino workers, with Leighs typically recruiting between 30 and 40 at a time from an initial list of more than 600, with those selected providing quality skills across an array of different fields.

"They come here with a really strong work ethic and an excellent range of skills," Leighs said.

"One thing we enjoy in our international workforce is they don't sit into specific specialisations - we can put them to work across a number of tasks."

Anthony Leighs (R) at the Leighs Construction office. Source: SBS screenshot

The significance of the damage the city suffered means that there is still a sizeable amount of work that needs to be done, and the amount of spending that has taken place so far hasn't been matched anywhere else in the world, according to Canterbury Employer's Chamber of Commerce CEO Peter Townsend.

"The rebuild is about 45 to 50 billion dollars, and that's for a population of 360,000 people which is quite extraordinary," Townsend told SBS.

"There's probably another three or four years of intense rebuild activity. The reality is right now we're spending $100 million a week every week rebuilding this city and I don't think that's happened anywhere else in the world."

As for Anthony Leighs, it's about making the transition between countries comfortable for his foreign employees.

"We had teams of our workers in the local basketball competition, they love basketball," the MD continued.

"We had a facility where a number of them lived so we built basketball courts and bits and pieces for them. Their religion is very important to them and helping them find the right pastoral care and the likes."

Once one of New Zealand's least culturally diverse cities, as Christchurch gets a facelift, deeper changes have seen it diversify into a multicultural hub.

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