Utusan Malaysia’s chapter of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ-Utusan) today confirmed that the newspaper’s non-executive staff have finally received their salary for July.

As such, NUJ-Utusan said it will not be taking further action as the newspaper’s management had made good on their promise to resolve the late payment.

NUJ-Utusan expressed relief and thanked the newspaper’s management, particularly group managing director Noordin Abbas for helping to resolve the issue.

“At the same time, NUJ-Utusan hope that this matter will not be repeated in future,” it said.

Non-executive staff at Utusan Malaysia are paid their salary twice a month, once at the middle of the month and another on the last day of the month.

However, it was announced on July 21 that the the month-end salary would be late.

This was revealed by former Utusan group chief editor Zainuddin Maidin who described the company as “sickly”.

Immediately after the revelation, NUJ-Utusan expressed public support for Noordin’s leadership and said it was confident he can resolve the issue.

The union noted that the current leadership was facing the difficult task of “cleaning the mess” of the previous management.

NUJ-Utusan said going forward, it hope the cash-strapped company can diversify its source of income.

The Umno-owned newspaper had been plagued by falling readership and revenue, on top of having to pay damages after losing several defamation suits.