Nearly three years after the plane’s disappearance, Stampin MP Julian Tan and Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim said none of the issues they raised had been addressed.
Among these were the government’s negligence in not intercepting the plane, which Sim had raised in Parliament in June 2014. A minister had dismissed Sim’s question, saying “it is a secret”.
Tan had also requested during his parliamentary debate in November 2016 that the government provide a detailed report on the negligence of the Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control (ATC) and the military in tracking and not intercepting the rogue flight.
No report has been given until today, they said in a joint statement today.
Other critical issues that remained unaddressed are the matter of passengers with stolen passports, discrepancies in the cargo manifest, and the lack of response after military radar detected an unidentified flying object in Malaysian airspace for at least half an hour, they said.
They alleged that at least one ATC supervisor was asleep during his shift and had to be woken up by a subordinate hours after the loss of communication with MH370.
Issues on an international scale included Ho Chi Minh’s breach of the operational letter of agreement between Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation and the Vietnam Air Traffic Management.
The duo said Ho Chi Min had failed to comply with the five-minute rule on alerting the transferring unit when it could not establish communication with the plane. They added that Ho Chi Minh only alerted Kuala Lumpur 20 minutes later.
There was also a delay in issuing the distress call, which should have been issued within an hour after losing contact with MH370 but was instead released more than five hours later.
Tan and Sim said they had been assured in 2016 that a report would be given on the issues involving Vietnam’s breach of international protocol. However, the result has remained the same with no report given until now.
The duo called on the government to reverse its decision to halt the search for MH370, saying that “solid answers” were needed.
“The government of Malaysia has shown the greatest contempt for victims of MH370 and their families by the lack of transparency and accountability in handling this issue.
“The high cost of the search mission is nothing compared to the lives of billions of flight passengers,” they said.
Tan and Sim urged the government to form a bipartisan parliamentary committee to oversee the investigation which they said must be transparent.
“In this third year anniversary of MH370, Prime Minister Najib Razak has no excuse to further delay the setting up of such a parliamentary select committee.”