Where on earth do you find someone who's qualified (and prepared to take the risk!) of constructing a tunnel that people to go in... for $30/hr? Surely a professional like that can get a better job anywhere else?
Yes, why wouldn't be there? Speaking strictly for Romania (from where I'm from) the Bucharest underground in the 1980s and almost all of the big hydro-dams projects (which also require extensive tunneling work) were carried with Romanian engineers only (we received the help of the Soviets in the early 1960s for the hydro works, though). And to be honest that question in itself is a little "orientalist", but I'll just pass over that part of the post.
> If there are then good for them, but I still don't get why qualified people would accept so little
Because wages are still pretty low in countries like Romania (and I guess in Poland and Bulgaria too, to give just a few examples), $30 per hour is more than enough. Plus the engineers themselves alone are no good, the project is based on the people who actually have to dig the stuff out, for them $30 per hour is double more than enough.
Great specific question! Because Romania isn't a signatory to the Washington Accord, which is the mechanism by which these engineering degrees get recognised for chartership by other countries.
https://www.ieagreements.org/accords/washington/signatories/
It's a simple fact that chartered engineering societies don't accept many overseas degrees! It's very hard to get chartered from overseas unless you've been to a few very notable universities. Even being listed on the European Engineering Education Database isn't accepted.
https://www.engc.org.uk/glossary-faqs/frequently-asked-quest...
I think only you've brought up chartered engineers, which, obviously, not everyone involved in construction labor will be.
Parts of Eastern Europe have had an industrial base since the 1800s. Indeed, the Czechs have been making cars since 1905. Of course Eastern Europe trains qualified construction workers.
How are they getting accredited to work in the US or UK?
Requiring everyone to have a degree, even to do simple stuff, would be absurd. If you do in the US, then that is the reason for high costs.