Burdened by heavy losses, Malayalam TV channel owner flees Dubai

A cameraman told the daily that the staffers were informed that a new investor has come on board and that he will take care of all their liabilities.

Picture: Channel D (Facebook page)

Dubai: Mounting financial losses forced an Indian owner of a Dubai-based Malayalam TV station to flee from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leaving his employees in disarray. “We had not been paid for months but in the hope of a turnaround the dozen odd staffers lumbered on. Nobody expected the end to come so soon,” a senior staff told Gulf News. Despite the TV channel's office on 2nd December street in Jumeirah 1 remaining non-functional, the channel is still broadcasting programmes. Operations of the channel’s Kochi unit are, however, halted, the report said. A cameraman told the daily that the staffers were informed that a new investor has come on board and that he will take care of all their liabilities. "We believed them. But now it appears that the company never had any intention to pay us,” he said. The report further said that fingerprint door access control of staffers was deactivated in March this year while telephone lines were snapped a month prior to that. “These were obvious red flags but we didn’t suspect anything amiss because we trusted the owner,” said another staffer.