Oh for sure, Western projects do tap more of the local labour pool. They're also more likely to be overbudget and behind schedule (California HSR and most transit/rail projects in the US, etc). To some degree, that's just a difference in management technique and there's definitely an advantage to training more workers at the cost of time and money.

On the other hand, those "basic" tasks only seem basic because we have had a proper Western education... And that's not something we should be taking for granted.