Staff at ATV still waiting for money – but they don’t follow up on threat to pull plug on Hong Kong station

Staff at beleaguered Asia Television did not receive their long overdue wages on Friday, but there was no follow-up to a threat made a day earlier that transmission would be cut if they were not paid.

Some employees have still not received their December salaries, and no one has been paid for January, despite being told by management on Thursday that station investor Si Rongbin had found someone who had agreed to pump in an initial HK$30 million.

ATV’s senior public relations manager Jeff Wong Sau-tung told media after a senior management meeting on Friday night that Si promised “some of the staff”will receive their December wages by Saturday, and all employees would be paid both their December and January wages within the next week.

Wong added that transmission of the station’s channels would not be cut off “at the current stage”.

An employee in the news department complained: “We are still not paid. No one from the management has briefed us on anything. I was not even asked to go back to work tomorrow.”

On Thursday a message from Si was passed to department heads in a morning meeting that a local investor had agreed to invest in ATV, a source with knowledge of the meeting said.