The employees, who performed their duties on Thursday as usual, came to their workplaces in Noakhali, Laxmipur, Comilla and Chandpur yesterday morning only to find themselves terminated.

They later assembled at the local office of the contractor, Grants, at the district headquarters in Maijdee and staged demonstration. They kept the company project manager's office under siege for two hours.

"Our project completed a week ago, we don't have any employees now," Grants Project Manager Claudio Garcia told The Daily Star over telephone last night.

He said he cannot recall how many people worked for his company. "For further information, you may talk to our head office," he said declining to give details.

Grants, which works for various oil and gas companies including Petrobangla started working in the four districts in March last year for seismic survey. The findings will be handed over to Cairn for oil and gas exploration in these areas.

The company had hired 40 public relations officer, two safety officers, 10 assistant safety officer, and three medical officers and officers to run the management and accounts.

It also hired technical crew as foreman, recording officer, drilling foreman, surveyor, co-ordinator and other staff. In total there were 1,500 operations crew and 200 officers and employees.

"Although as per the International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention we are supposed to work eight hours a day, the company forced us to work for 12 hours from 8:00am to 8:00pm," says crew Abul Kalam.

The employees say the company in most cases did not even allow them to enjoy weekly holidays.

"They did not serve us any notice before firing us," said a medical officer. "We came to work this morning and found ourselves jobless."

An official of Cairn last night claimed ignorance about the demonstration in front of Grants local office or the termination of its staff.