Proposing this, DAP advisor and Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang argued that the international inquiry was required as “this is not only a national but an international disaster affecting all nations in the world.”
In light of yesterday’s announcement by acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein on several committees set up to charge over several aspects of the crisis, Lim questioned if this meant that the government has abandoned having a PSC on MH370.
“The first question to crop up is whether Hishammuddin and the Cabinet have abandoned the proposal of a Parliamentary Select Committee on MH370 and if so, why?” asked Lim in a press statement, issued at his service centre in Johor this morning.
Lim said that Hishammuddin had on March 25 “assured Parliament that he would propose to the Cabinet the call by MPs for a PSC and a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to investigate the MH370 tragedy.”
However, yesterday evening, Hishammuddin announced that an investigation team as well as three ministerial committees have been formed on MH370.
Hishammuddin said an independent “investigator-in-charge” to lead an investigation team comprising three groups, namely airworthiness, operational, and medical and human factor.
The three ministerial committees were namely a next-of-kin committee, headed by Hamzah Zainuddin, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister; a technical committee led by Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, the Deputy Transport Minister and a deployment of assets committee, helmed by Deputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri.
Lim said that Hishammuddin’s previous undertaking was said during he was winding up the special motion tabled by the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to mourn the fate of flight MH370's 239 passengers and crew.
“Hishammuddin told Parliament at the time that both the Transport Ministry and the Royal Malaysian Air Force had separately set up an audit committee into the MH370 disaster, and that all these investigations will operate simultaneously with the SAR (search-and-rescue) mission.”
Now, Lim said, Hishammuddin owes MPs and the nation an explanation whether his announcement of an investigation by three groups and three ministerial committees into the MH370 disaster precluded and pre-empted the formation of a PSC on the MH370.
Lim said that a PSC should have a wider and more comprehensive terms of reference, that should “go beyond the issues of the airworthiness of MH370 Boeing 777-200 aircraft, the operational aspects of the flight and the psychological and pathological aspects of the 239 passengers and crew”.
“...the whole series of events after its disappearance which have provoked a thousand-and-one questions, controversies, confusion and conspiracy theories and most important of all, to send out a clear and unmistakable message, both nationally and internationally, that Malaysia has nothing to hide and to restore national and international confidence in the transparency, good governance and reputation of the nation badly afflicted by the MH370 disaster,” said Lim.
Among the issues the PSC should investigate, said Lim, include:
- Whether the MH370 disappearance could have been averted if Malaysia's air traffic controllers and the Royal Malaysian Air Force radar operators had been more vigilant and acted promptly when the Boeing 777-200 aircraft vanished early March 8, with the immediate launching of a search-and-rescue operation.
- Whether a week had been wasted looking for MH370 in the South China Sea before switching the area of search from the east to the west, moving from the Straits of Malacca, the Andaman Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Northern and Southern Corridors, and eventually to southern Indian Ocean; and
- Whether three days had been wasted looking for MH370 in the wrong part of the Indian Ocean because of poor co-ordinating among countries working on locating the missing aircraft.
“It will also be the proper province of the PSC on MH370 to review whether the MH370 disaster warrants new and additional budgets for more military assets and a more efficient civil aviation system and to make recommendations to Parliament, the government and the nation,” he said.
