Court suggests paying part of Kingfisher staff salary

August 06, 2013 01:57 am | Updated June 04, 2016 04:16 pm IST - Bangalore:

Why don’t you pay at least a portion of salary to your employees who are facing a difficult situation due to non-payment of monthly salary?

The Karnataka High Court posed this question orally to senior counsel representing UB Holding Ltd. (UBHL), which is the holding company of Kingfisher Airlines Limited (KAL), during hearing of petitions seeking winding up of both these companies.

“They [employees] have worked for you. Paying your employees is more important than making payments to the banks [which are seeking liquidation]. The banks can wait. These employees are finding it difficult to survive due to non-payment of salary. You can’t keep them hungry. Why don’t you pay at least a portion of the amount due to them…,” observed Justice Ram Mohan Reddy.

The court posed this question when counsel representing employees pointed out that the employees are facing a difficult situation as the Income Tax Department has issued notice to them for non-payment of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) as KFL had failed to remit TDS deducted from their salaries.

Company stand

Meanwhile, Senior Counsel Uday Holla, appearing for the UBHL, submitted that the company would try to make some payment while pointing out that the company was contemplating paying some amount to its employees from the amount realised from the recent sale of United Spirits Limited shares to Diageo Plc, but it was difficult due to restrictions imposed on utilisation of sale consideration by the court.

Mr. Holla also pointed out that salary due for all categories of employees is about Rs. 27 crore per month.

The court postponed further hearing to August 27 while asking BNP Paribas and other creditors to file their responses to the statement of UBHL.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.