Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge says the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) pro­gramme has not been shut down.

He yes­ter­day as­sured young peo­ple that the Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the val­ue of the ini­tia­tive and that they have “noth­ing to wor­ry about.”

His clar­i­fi­ca­tion came af­ter re­ports cir­cu­lat­ed that 72 of the pro­gramme’s 114 em­ploy­ees will have their con­tracts end­ed on Ju­ly 31.

Sturge re­vealed that the CCC has not had an in­take of stu­dents since Jan­u­ary, while the Gov­ern­ment has been spend­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.5 mil­lion month­ly to keep the pro­gramme run­ning.

“You’re spend­ing all this mon­ey and you have no­body to train, and there is no in­take com­ing in in the next few months, and the next in­take is card­ed for Jan­u­ary [2026], so we can­not con­tin­ue to spend two point what­ev­er mil­lion a month for noth­ing,” he said dur­ing a phone in­ter­view.

Sturge said be­fore the work­ers’ con­tracts ex­pired, he met with Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts and his per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to dis­cuss the mat­ter, and the de­ci­sion was made at that time.

The CCC and oth­er sim­i­lar pro­grammes are cur­rent­ly be­ing trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs to the Min­istry of De­fence. Sturge said this process should be com­plet­ed soon.

“I don’t want to say too much about what we in­tend to do, but it’s go­ing to be mar­ried with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the stu­dents who are ex­pelled. We have things we’re putting in place; we have a lot of meet­ings still to take place,” he said.

“The youth need to know that they have noth­ing to wor­ry (about). But the bal­anc­ing act at this point is whether we can jus­ti­fy to tax­pay­ers that we are bleed­ing two point some­thing (mil­lion) a month and there are no stu­dents there. I don’t think the tax­pay­ers will be hap­py to hear that.”

How­ev­er, one re­gion­al man­ag­er, who asked to re­main anony­mous, chal­lenged the min­is­ter’s claim that there are no trainees and the pro­gramme is not ready to re­sume.

Ac­cord­ing to the man­ag­er, a new cy­cle of 1,000 trainees was due to start on Jan­u­ary 15 but an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions of the CCC, MI­LAT, and MY­PART pro­grammes, ini­ti­at­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), put the start of the CCC cy­cle on hold.

He said the trainees were se­lect­ed from a pool of 2,500 ap­pli­cants to par­tic­i­pate in the lat­est cy­cle across eight re­gions.

De­spite the de­lay, he said CCC staff re­mained proac­tive, tak­ing part in pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives to pre­pare for the new in­take. This in­clud­ed train­ing in agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and ve­hi­cle and fa­cil­i­ty main­te­nance.

“The em­ploy­ees used these skills to start up com­mu­ni­ty out­reach projects in each re­gion. This in­clud­ed part­ner­ing with schools to es­tab­lish grow box projects, there­by pro­mot­ing food se­cu­ri­ty with­in the com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Stu­dents feel aban­doned

Guardian Me­dia spoke to one of the stu­dents who had been se­lect­ed for the Jan­u­ary 2025 in­take. He said re­ceiv­ing that call felt like his fu­ture was fi­nal­ly com­ing to­geth­er.

“I was ea­ger to start in Jan­u­ary, meet new peo­ple, learn new skills, and help sup­port my fam­i­ly,” he said.

With the pro­gramme now on hold, he said he feels lost and anx­ious every day.

“It’s heart­break­ing be­cause some of us were re­al­ly count­ing on this chance,” he said.

He added that it’s hard not to feel aban­doned by the Gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter work­ing so hard to get in­to the pro­gramme.

“Is this a re­play un­der this Gov­ern­ment, to close these pro­grammes which were put in place for us young peo­ple who lack op­por­tu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing from my com­mu­ni­ty of Laven­tille?” he asked, say­ing he still hopes to make a dif­fer­ence.

An­oth­er trainee from Ch­agua­nas, who al­so re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said she wakes up every day hop­ing for good news about the pro­gramme.

“We pre­pared our­selves men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly for this op­por­tu­ni­ty. It’s not just a pro­gramme—it’s a life­line that has been sud­den­ly tak­en away from us,” she said.

A past trainee, who grad­u­at­ed last De­cem­ber as a qual­i­fied au­to me­chan­ic, said he has yet to find a job and hopes the new ad­min­is­tra­tion will sup­port un­em­ployed grad­u­ates of the youth pro­gramme in se­cur­ing em­ploy­ment.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed for­mer Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings, who en­cour­aged young peo­ple, “Don’t give up hope.”

He said the Op­po­si­tion will do every­thing in its pow­er to rep­re­sent their in­ter­ests and hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count.

CCC was es­tab­lished in 1993 to equip un­em­ployed youth (16-25 brack­et) with life and vo­ca­tion­al skills, while con­tribut­ing to en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion.

The pro­gramme was spread across eight re­gions: Barataria, Mau­si­ca, San­gre Grande, Ch­agua­nas, Princes Town, Point Fortin, Rio Claro, and To­ba­go.