PETALING JAYA (The Star/Asia News Network) - Fitness firm True Group has said that it will pay the outstanding salaries owed to 70 of its staff in Malaysia affected by the sudden closure of its fitness centres.

A spokesman for the Singapore-based True Group said that its accounts were "held back" due to the announcement of the closure of its fitness centres in Malaysia.

"That has been resolved and the salaries and commissions have been sent to all staff and will be released on June 19," he said on Tuesday (June 13).

On Saturday (June 11), True Fitness Malaysia announced that it had ceased all operations of its three gym and spa facilities located in Jaya 33, Taipan Subang and Sunway Giza as they were "no longer financially viable" due to evolving market conditions.

True Fitness Malaysia is part of the True Group, which has a number of subsidiaries operating its outlets in Malaysia.

The True Group claims about 10,000 members were affected by its closure, and the spokesman explained that former staff and members were not told in advance of the abrupt closure as its creditors had left them with "no option" to do so.

"We express our sympathies about the matter that has happened, we tried to exhaust all other options but there were no alternates available except to consolidate the business in Malaysia," he said.

He also said that True Fitness Malaysia had been incurring operating losses since the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in May 2015.

"The losses for 2015 were RM9.15 million (S$2.97 million) and we lost RM7.26 million in 2016. Over the past year, the businesses in Singapore, Taiwan and China were assisting to subsidise the losses in Malaysia," he said.