The building firm contracted to build the Island's new $70 million secondary school said it is receiving about 15 applications a day from people looking for work.

Pro-Active Management Services president Arthur Ebbin said he had more than 200 active applications on file - and was expecting that number to increase with the premature slow down of the hotel and tourism industry.

Pro-Active is contracted to build the state-of-the-art replacement for Berkeley Institute by September 2003, but concerns have been raised that the site is already running behind schedule.

But Mr. Ebbin said the project was on time so far, with water tanks being installed and concreted in. He declined to comment further.

He said: "What I will say is that we have received about 200 job applications from people wanting to work for Pro-Active. We have guys coming to my different job sites asking for work, and we have people coming to Berkeley. We are a young and progressive company and all of our staff are well taken care of - and we have a lot of work on - so people want to work for us.

"I would say we get ten to 15 applications every day, and I get three or four calls every day. We get people calling at the sites. We tell them all to come in and fill out an application form, and we are and will take people on as and when we need them."

Mr. Ebbin said if Pro-Active is unable to use some of the applicants, they pass them on to sub-contractors if they think their skills could be useful.

When Pro-Active was awarded the contract at the end of May this year, Works and Engineering Minister Alex Scott said one of the main reasons the company was chosen as the favoured bidder was because of its policy to hire Bermudians where ever possible.

However, some people on the Island feared that there was far too much construction work going on in Bermuda for the local workforce to handle, anyway. They said people would ultimately have to be brought in from overseas.

But yesterday Mr Ebbin said he had had no problems so far in getting locals to do the work.

He added: "I can only speak for our firm, but we have had no problems. We have several companies that are looking to work for us. We have not had any problems to date getting staff, but we may have to bring in speciality people later on to do things that are not done in Bermuda very much.

"We are still in the early stages at the moment, but when we get to the height of the job, when we have 150 people on there, then it may be an issue."

Mr. Ebbin has refused to answer any questions about the site. He claims concerns have only been raised about this particular project because Pro-Active is little known and it is a firm made up of mostly black workers.

And he said he would not talk about what stage the work was at, or what kinds of activities were going on. He has promised to show The Royal Gazette around the site in six months' time.

He said: "I'm not making any comments about the job. It is a very big job - let us get on with it. Give us six months and then come back and ask us where we are at and I will tell you."