UTUSAN Melayu Bhd has failed to make its first payment to employees who left the company last month under a voluntary separation scheme.

The first of 12 monthly payments due tomorrow has been postponed to an unspecified date.

“On the first payment, the company is trying its best to pay as quickly as possible,” said the human resource director Mohd Nazlan Osman in a letter to the former employees sighted by The Malaysian Insight.

Some 700 employees agreed to leave the Umno mouthpiece under the VSS scheme.

Several former journalists confirmed they received the letter, in which Utusan said the company had insufficient funds to make the VSS payment.

This was because it had yet to be paid for the sale of the company assets, it said.

“We have sold our assets in the first phase for RM30.5 million but we have not yet received the payment from our buyer.”

Sources said the company that bought the assets had paid RM600,000 and was owing the balance.

On September 21, the Umno-owned media company offered a retrenchment scheme aimed at offloading at least half of the 1,500-strong workforce.

The employees rejected the package offered at the time as inadequate.

Following intervention and pressure from the government, Utusan agreed to increase the compensation.

Those who were paid below RM5,000 a month were offered six weeks’ pay for every year of service or number of years left before retirement, whichever is less.

Those earning between more than RM5,000 and less than RM10,000 monthly would get five weeks’ pay, while those who drew more than RM10,000 monthly would get a month’s pay.

The money is to be paid in 12 monthly instalments – terms to which the Deputy Human Resources Minister Mahfuz Omar had objected.

The total payout for all the laid-off employees would cost Utusan around RM80 million, which is to come from the sale of the company’s assets. – December 24, 2018.