United Air compels 200 employees to take unpaid leave

Private carrier United Airways (BD) Limited has recently forced at least 200 employees to take unpaid leave.

Apart from that, the airliner could not pay the monthly salary of several hundred employees during the last six month because of its fund crunch.

The company’s revenue earning has now been totally stopped as it failed to operate any aircraft on any route due to the technical glitches.

Moreover, it has not yet paid its dues of aeronautical and non-aeronautical charges worth over Tk125 crore.

“As the employees could not get their due salary for the last six months, many of them have already left the organisation,” according to an official source.

Dhaka Tribune couldn’t reach Managing Director of United Air Tasbirul Ahmed Chowdhury, despite repeated attempts were made over his mobile number.

Besides, none of the top officials of the airlines also declined to talk about the employees’ forced leave without pay issue.

Meanwhile, all the pilots and engineers of the airlines have already quit the airliner to grab a better job. Most of them have joined other private local carriers while few others joined foreign carriers.

In mid-January, all the aircraft were grounded. The airliner resumed flights on February 24. Later, it grounded again as the company didn’t maintain proper maintenance.

According to the Dhaka Tribune investigation, all the aircraft of the airline are now grounded due to technical glitches.

Since its inception in 2007, it had to suspend operations for three days in September 2014 due to financial crisis.

A still serving official of the United Airways said: “The owner of the building, which housed the airliner head office, has already served a legal notice to the management few days back to pay all the dues including monthly rent. Otherwise, the airliner will have to leave the building.”

So far, there has been no initiative from the management of the airlines to resume its flights due to the surfaced business conflict among the board of directors, the highest policy making body, said another official.

As a public limited company, there is no big investment from the board of director’s end. Around 90% investment came from public money. That is why, they don’t have any interest to resume its flight operation by investing more money.

The airliner had earlier bought some old aircrafts at a cost of Tk400 crore, raised through offering rights shares to its shareholders.

Its last international flight was operated by an MD 83 aircraft to Kuala Lumpur in mid-January which finally returned to Dhaka after one of its engines was shutdown at mid-air. The aircraft has remained grounded since then due to proper maintenance.

The private carrier having 11 aircrafts in its fleet used to operate flights to eight domestic and seven international destinations.