NEW DELHI, APRIL 2:
The
Kingfisher Chairman, Mr Vijay Mallya's attempt to boost the morale of
his employees by announcing that the airline's accounts had been
unfrozen appeared to have backfired on Monday, with the employees
threatening a strike over unpaid dues.
Ignoring
Mr Mallya's assurance of salary payment, Kingfisher employees
threatened to go on strike from Tuesday, unless at least half the
pending salaries were paid by April 3. Kingfisher staff have not been
paid salaries for four months.
Mr
Mallya in his letter to the employees had assured that all junior staff
will be paid by April 4, while pilots and engineers would be paid by
April 9-10.
The
airline's employees have also appealed to the players of Mr Mallya's
Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team, Royal Challengers Bangalore,
to boycott IPL matches starting April 4. They said that such an effort
will help in getting their dues.
FLIGHTS CANCELLED
Meanwhile, some flights from Delhi and Mumbai were reported cancelled as the staff did not report for duty.
However,
there is no official confirmation on the cancellation. The debt-laden
airline had announced on March 27 that it will operate 120 flights with
20 aircraft in a 'holding plan' starting March 25 and ending on October
27, 2012.
The
developments were precipitated by an internal communication from Mr
Mallya, where he announced that "The formalities of un-freezing our bank
accounts was completed yesterday following our payment of Rs 44 crore
to the Income-Tax and Rs 20 crore to the Service Tax authorities before
March 31."
The authorities had earlier frozen close to 40 accounts of the airline for non-payment of dues.
Mr
Mallya has also indicated that starting this week, he is going to be
"personally available at each major station" for one day a week to
listen to the concerns of staff at all levels.
"We
have managed to keep the lights on in our days of darkness with
adversity from every conceivable direction. The freeze of our accounts
and consequent IATA suspension, the resultant loss of the BSP booking
platform, the adverse media blitz and the loss of customer confidence
are all serious challenges that we have survived," the mail added.
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