Air India to send some employees on leave without pay for up to five years

New Delhi : Air India has come up with orders to identify the employees, based on factors like efficiency, health and redundancy, who will be sent on compulsory leave without pay (LWP) for up to five years, according to an official order.

Air India’s board of directors have authorised its Chairman and Managing Director Rajiv Bansal to send employees on LWP for six months or for a period of two years extendable upto five years, depending upon their efficiency, competence, quality of performance, health of the employee, instance of non-availability of the employee for duty in the past as a result of ill health or otherwise and redundancy”, the order said. 

The departmental heads in the headquarter as well as regional directors are required to assess each employee “on the above mentioned factors and identify the cases where option of compulsory LWP can be exercised”, stated the order dated July 14.

“Names of such employees need to be forwarded to the General Manager (Personnel) in headquarter for obtaining necessary approval of CMD,” the order further added. 

The Air India spokesperson refused to make any statement and said, ”We would not like to make any comment on the issue.”

It may be mentioned here that all airlines in India have taken cost-cutting measures such as pay cuts, LWP and firings of employees in order to conserve cash flow due to coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier, GoAir has put most of its employees on compulsory LWP since April.

India resumed domestic passenger flights from May 25 after a gap of two months due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the airlines have been allowed to operate only a maximum of 45 per cent of their pre-Covid domestic flights. Occupancy rate in Indian domestic flights has been around 50-60 per cent since May 25.

[With agency inputs]