Sunday, March 6, 2016

2 years on, still no answer from Putrajaya on MH370, says DAP

Two years on and there are still many unanswered questions as to what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, DAP said today. DAP lawmaker Steven Sim said hundreds of millions of taxpayers money had gone into the investigation, and yet Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration seemed to be "zealously guarding its reports and results". He said it was a question of national security as much as it was a matter of grave concern for families of the victims. "Why national security? Because if we do not deal with the root cause of the problem, there will be future reoccurrences. "The opposition had raised many questions about MH370 in and outside the Parliament. Yet, from the first day, the government has refused to provide any substantial information. "My parliamentary question in June 2014 on the important subject of military negligence for not taking action despite detecting MH370 on a rogue path was rejected on the pretext of it being a 'secret' (perkara rahsia)," he said in a statement today. Sim, who is Bukit Mertajam MP, said he had repeatedly called for a parliamentary select committee on the issue with the view to publish a white paper on this landmark aviation crisis affecting not just Malaysia and Malaysians but which had global implication. Yet these calls were rejected with silence from the government in the last two years, he said. "I have called for the publication of the results by all authorities involved in the investigation – including the Department of Civil Aviation, the military, the police as well as the Joint Investigation Team. "Other than the Interim Report published a year after the incident, we have no other official reports released to the public," he said. On the Interim Report, Sim said it was clear that investigators had found many shortcomings, non-compliances and weaknesses in our national airline, our aviation authority and our military. "There was even a breach of international protocol by Vietnam, under the terms stipulated by the Operational Letter of Agreement between the Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia and Vietnam Air Traffic Management. "One year had passed since the Interim Report, what has happened to the various non-compliances and negligences highlighted? No one can tell, even after our repeated questioning," he said. Sim said the scary part was nobody knew if these problems had been resolved and people would not know if the flight they had boarded would be another MH370. Sim, who is also director of Penang government think tank Penang Institute, said there was also concern over police investigation on MH370 pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, given that he had been implicated on numerous occasions as the "chief suspect" by the police. "The government must provide clear answers to these serious allegations so as to clear the name of the pilot and his family if he was innocent." MH370 went missing with all its 239 passengers and crew shortly after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing in the early morning hours of March 8 two years ago. The highly expensive search for the missing flight had involved over 20 countries. To date, the only piece of debris confirmed to be from MH370 is a flaperon found on the beach of the French island of Reunion in July last year. – March 7, 2016.]]>

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