'Trusted Vijay Mallya, His Promises Were False': Ex-Kingfisher Employees

Mumbai: "Pay us our dues" - that's the slogan raised by former employees of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines while protesting in Mumbai against ex-chairman Vijay Mallya.

The former Kingfisher employees are now urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and ensure unpaid salaries which run into a whopping Rs 800 crore are cleared.

"Our PM should intervene and do something about the staff salaries and not just about the banks because even we are facing so many problems. Dr Mallya promised us that 'whoever stays with me till the end will get their salaries and dues' but nothing has happened yet. His promises are false," said Leena Kadam, a former Duty Manager with Kingfisher Airlines.

Ms Kadam, who was with Kingfisher Airlines since the day it launched in 2005, is now without a job. After hoping to get her arrears for four years, she resigned last month.

Aniruddh Ballal, a former senior manager at the airlines, couldn't even repay his daughter's education loan as he worked without pay for six months and did not receive his gratuity on resigning. He was forced to use savings of his aged parents to pay off his loan.

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"I was unable to pay off the education loan I had taken for my daughter and had to break my parents' fixed deposits. I had to keep requesting the bank to waive off the interest on my loan and could finally clear it after they waived-off a part of it," he said.

The employees claim, over 7,000 staffers have years of unpaid arrears and like banks, they too have a stake in the $75 million or Rs 515 crore Mr Mallya recently got as severance package for resigning as chairman of India's top spirits company United Spirits, a unit of UK-based Diageo.

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"We supported him throughout even when times were bad. But now there's no word from him," said Priyanka Dwivedi, a former ground staff at Kingfisher Airlines.

Even as investigations against Mr Mallya and his group continue, thousands of former Kingfisher employees are still angry yet hopeful they will be compensated for their losses.