Debt-ridden Tulip Telecom is to clear the pending salary dues of its employees within the next 60 days, a top company official said.
While some employees of the enterprise data services provider said that they have not been paid for about five months, Tulip says the backlog is not more than a “couple of months”.
“We have got a well-defined business plan in place and we are aggressively working towards it and salary-related issues are incorporated. The salary backlog will be cleared in coming one or two months,” said Ashu Malhotra-Head HR of Tulip Telecom, which employs about 4,500 personnel.
Last week, Tulip had received a formal nod for its debt re-jigging proposal from the Empowered Group of the Corporate Debt Restructuring Cell. A consortium of 13 banks and financial institutions that had given loans to the company approved the package, which covers debt of Rs 3,000 crore.
Tulip has been accumulating debt in the last few years due to heavy investments in data centres and for financing its working capital requirements. However, these investments did not bring in revenues as expected, analysts said. Tulip said it has been releasing the full and final settlement amount of employees who had quit last year on a periodical basis. “There may be a few exceptional cases where the final settlement might have been prolonged due to various reasons such as final settlement not done properly, handing over was not properly done, financials not settled etc. All such cases will be resolved shortly,” said Malhotra.