New Delhi, July 19: After reports of Air India planning to offer voluntary buyouts to just over a third of its 40,000 employees, Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani clarified on Wednesday that the report was totally baseless and there were no such plan right now of offering Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) to employees ahead of disinvestment. “Staff morale being affected is natural considering disinvestment talk, but we are a strong brand with strong staff”, a tweet by ANI quoted Lohani saying.
According to a report published by Reuters, the national carrier was planning to offer voluntary buyouts to just over a third of its 40,000 employees. Air India is on the block after the government last month approved plans to privatise the loss-making airline by selling part or all of the company and ending decades of state support. The report further added saying that the airline has been under a debt of $8.5 billion while since 2012, New Delhi has injected $3.6 billion to keep it afloat.
On Wednesday, around 300 employees, associated with the Air Corporation’s Employees Union (ACEU), gathered outside the Air India office near the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi to protest against government’s decision of privatisation of Air India. The ACEU represents nearly 8,000 of the total 24,000 staff members and is the biggest union of Air India employees. It is a grouping of non-technical staff of the airline. “We appeal to the government of India not to go for privatisation and disinvestment of Air India. We are always ready to turnaround Air India,” the ACEU said in its statement.