Employees Are Willing To Have Their Salaries In Arrears, Angkasa Pura I Management Is Grateful: We Will Fix It Soon

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Angkasa Pura I)

JAKARTA - PT Angkasa Pura I (Persero) or AP I admitted to delaying the payment of salaries of its employees. The decision was taken due to the condition of declining income and the company's debt burden which reached IDR 32.7 trillion. In fact, this State-owned Enterprise (BUMN) airport operator gave a signal that it would reduce human resources (HR) gradually.

Director of Human Resources and General Affairs of AP I M. Arifin Firdaus explained that his company was delaying the payment of salaries and employee benefits because the company was experiencing financial difficulties. This is reflected in the company's revenue which was only IDR 2.5 trillion as of October 2021.

When compared, AP I's revenue in 2019 by managing 13 airports generated IDR 8.93 trillion. However, this year the revenue received is only IDR 3.2 trillion.

Meanwhile, payment obligations to creditors and investors are around IDR 28 trillion as of November 2021, and to employees, obligations to suppliers are IDR 4.7 trillion. So the total liability is around IDR 32.7 trillion.

"In the process of traveling, we postponed the payment of several benefits that should be the rights of employees, including delays in paying salaries," said Arifin, in a virtual press conference, Wednesday, December 8.

Arifin said that the consideration for delaying salary payments to employees was due to the implementation of work from home (WFH) when the Community Activity Restrictions (PPKM) were implemented. This is because most of the employees of AP I work from home and few work in the office or work from office (WFO).

"The consideration is that when PPKM there are WFH and WFO. The WFO is really 25 percent (incoming capacity), so that activities that require transportation costs are reduced. Therefore, management agreed to have a salary delay mechanism, not a salary reduction," he said.

Unfortunately, Arifin did not explain in detail the nominal amount of salary arrears that had not been paid by AP I to employees. Even so, his party promised that the problem would be resolved soon.

"So, it's as if the employee was asked to save roughly. Thank you for the support of AP 1 employees who are willing to see the company's financial condition that requires optimal efforts, so that they give up some of their rights such as delaying payments. Hopefully in the near future there will be a settlement process for that," he explained.

On the same occasion, President Director of PT Angkasa Pura I Faik Fahmi explained, passenger traffic has decreased drastically since the pandemic. In 2019, there were 81.5 million people.

Then, said Faik, the following year dropped to 32.8 million passengers. Meanwhile, in 2021 to October there will only be 21.5 million.

"Of course this has an impact on our financial condition, which previously we could generate IDR 8.93 trillion in 2019, decreased again to IDR 3.2 trillion. I think this condition is felt the same in almost all airports," said Faik.