Air India, which has not yet paid salaries for July, said today that employees will be paid by August 5. The debt-laden national carrier has around 21,000 employees.
"Salaries will be released by tomorrow," Air India spokesperson Dhananjay Kumar said on August 4, news agency PTI reported. There has been no other official word on the delay. Salaries are usually remitted by the first of every month, an employee said.
The delay in salaries comes at a time when the government is working on divesting stake in the airline. The Cabinet has given "in-principle" approval to sell stake in the loss-making carrier and a ministerial panel is working on the details of the proposed disinvestment.
The airline has a debt of more than Rs 50,000 crores. The previous Congress-led UPA government had given the carrier a bailout package worth a little over Rs 30,000 crore for a ten-year period starting 2012.
The civil aviation ministry is of the view that Air India's current business is "not sustainable" as it is neither able to generate enough cash flow nor start repaying even the principal amount on its debt.
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