The crisis in Kingfisher Airlines following a 23-day lockout is likely to prolong with a large section of employees today sticking to its refusal of the management’s offer on payment of salary dues even as its owner Vijay Mallya said he was not an “absconder”.

Under fire over the crisis and with agitated employees asking where he is, Mallya broke his silence, slamming sections of the media for calling him an “absconder”.

“I travel 24x7 where my multiple work responsibilities take me. Sections of media call me an absconder because I don’t talk to them,” Mallya said in a tweet.

Mallya’s tweet came against the backdrop of his absence at the talks or negotiations the management of the debt-ridden private carrier has been holding with the employees over the past two weeks.

The airline employees, who held meetings in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai, rejected the offer of payment of three months’ salaries in a staggered manner as part payment of its dues and insisted that it should be paid in lumpsum.

However, its Mumbai-based pilots said they were ready to accept the deal offered by the management as a condition to resume work. Salaries have been pending for seven months.

The airline CEO, Sanjay Aggarwal, today sent out emails to individual employees offering them three months salary by Diwali in mid-November, saying if they accepted the offer, they should send an acceptance note and resume work from Friday, which was objected to by the protestors.

The staffers also objected to Aggarwal’s suggestion that the employees, who would accept the offer, should send a reply to him saying: “I hereby accept the terms and conditions of the mail below and confirm that I shall be reporting to work effective October 26, 2012. I assure you that I would adhere to my duties in a manner that does not cause any further disruptions of our operations.”

The CEO also told the individual employees: “Once you have sent your acceptance, you can resume duties effective October 26, 2012.”

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