Kingfisher Airlines employees likely to go on hunger strike from today

New Delhi – Trouble seems to be brewing once again for the crisis-hit Kingfisher Airlines with its employees threatening a hunger strike from Monday demanding a stringent action against the defaulting company.

The employees, who have not been paid for the past 17 months, had warned that they would go on a hunger strike from January 6.

They also sought disqualification of corporate leaders from the membership of Parliament on charges of such default.

The King of Good Times has been grounded for over a year now surrounded by webs of tax, non-payment of employees, strikes, etc.

On December 30, 2013, the employees of the airlines said they would approach the Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal for help.

“We are going on indefinite hunger strike from January six. We have approached other political parties as well but as of now we have not got any satisfactory response from them. We request you to support us in whatever ways possible,” Anjan Kumar Deveshwar, a Kingfisher employees, said in a letter on behalf of the employees to Delhi minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia.

Alleging that Kingfisher kept paying its employees posted abroad due to the strict laws applicable there, they said, “Non payment of salary should be treated as a cognizable offence so that no one else has to suffer like us.”

As of now there is no clear law to deal with non-payment of salary by the management, the staffers said in the letter.

Besides non-payment of salaries, the Vijay Mallya-owned private carrier, which stopped operations in October 2012, has defaulted on payment of loans worth over Rs 7,200 crore, secured mainly from the public sector banks.

It also owes over Rs 390 crore to the Airports Authority of India, in addition to defaulting on service tax payment.