Jet Airways Owes Employees Upto Rs 85 Lakhs, Owner Offers Paltry Rs 23,000

The revival plan of defunct airline Jet Airways by its new owners Kalrock-Jalan proposes a payment of about Rs 23,000 to each employee for Rs 3 lakh to Rs 85 lakh that the company owes to each of them.

The Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has recently approved the resolution plan presented by Kalrock Capital and Murari Lal Jain.

According to it, the payment would be made only if 95 per cent of Jet employees give their acceptance to the plan within the next three months.

"Jet has asked employees to cast a vote, either a yes or no, to the plan cleared by NCLT. But the plan hardly offers about 0.5% of the total sum owed to each employee. It is as good as zero," said Kiran Pawaskar, president, All India Jet Airways Officers and Staff Association.

"If the issue isn't resolved, we will challenge this in the court," he told The Times of India.

"On preliminary perusal of the resolution plan we found no reference to the claims of the employees. A very paltry amount has been proposed as a resolution in the insolvency and bankruptcy process. The company over its 26 years of existence has a large work force and many of them have worked for long parts of their lives," the association said in a letter sent recently to the new civil aviation and labour ministers.

This bid by Kalrock Capital - a UK-based fund that teamed up with UAE-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan was submitted last year. On 18 October 2020, the creditors' committee finished reviewing their 900+ page revival plan and accepted a $136 million bid.

The company's dues to banks are around Rs 8,500 crore, while it owes another Rs 25,000 crore in arrears to lessors, employees and other firms.

Additionally, the founder-promoter of the airline, Naresh Goyal, is under scrutiny by various government agencies overcharges, which include money laundering.