Sev­en­ty-two of the 114 em­ploy­ees at the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) are be­ing sent home at the end of the month, af­ter re­ceiv­ing just a one-month con­tract ex­ten­sion, sources say.

Ac­cord­ing to a let­ter seen by Guardian Me­dia, short-term em­ploy­ees, among them De­fence Force mem­bers who were ad­min­is­ter­ing the mil­i­tary as­pect of the pro­gramme, were en­gaged with­out en­ti­tle­ments to va­ca­tion or sick leave and were in­formed that the arrange­ment could be end­ed by ei­ther par­ty with one month’s no­tice. One such con­tract of­fers em­ploy­ment set to end on Ju­ly 31.

The CCC pro­gramme, which was ex­pect­ed to restart in Jan­u­ary, nev­er did and re­mained on hold.