Kingfisher staff get salaries after 4 months

A large section of Kingfisher Airlines employees, including pilots and engineers, received their salaries on Monday after a delay of nearly four months, airline sources said.

"In fact, we paid the salaries of all employees on April 4 itself. However, because of some back-end problem in one of the banks, a section of employees could not get it then," they told PTI in Mumbai.

Last Tuesday, chairman of the crisis-hit airline Vijay Mallya assured his employees that their salaries would be disbursed in a staggered manner from April 4 to 10.

The airline has salary accounts in HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI.

Besides, the airline has paid the second instalment of Rs 9 crore (Rs 90 million) towards the tax deducted at source as per the directives of the tax tribunal, the sources said.

The airline has outstanding dues of about Rs 349 crore (Rs 3.49 billion).

Mallya

is also understood to have informed Directorate General of Civil Aviation about the payments made, as the aviation regulator had expressed concern that delays in salaries would impact Kingfisher's operations and affect the air travellers.

Facing the heat from employees, particularly the pilots and engineers who had had put the airline on notice by giving a deadline of April 20 to clear all their pending dues, Mallya had issued an e-mail to pacify the agitating staff.

Admitting that the salaries were 'seriously overdue', Mallya in his letter promised to pay their salaries and other dues in a staggered manner, saying the problem had arisen as its bank accounts were frozen by tax authorities.

The tax authorities had last week de-freezed the accounts on March 31 after the airline paid Rs 44 crore (Rs 440 million) to the Income Tax department and another Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) to the Service Tax authorities.