KUALA LUMPUR, April 16 — Cabinet will deliberate today the Transport Ministry’s proposal to kickstart an international probe on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said.
The acting transport minister said the move to form an international panel of experts for the probe is part of Malaysia’s pledge to stay transparent in its handling of the aviation disaster, despite criticisms from the international community.
“Its our ongoing effort for transparency... to show to the world that Malaysia has nothing to hide,” he told a press conference at the Putra World Trade Center (PWTC) this afternoon.
Hishammuddin said that Cabinet will determine who should sit on the panel and stressed that its members must be “respected”, “credible”, and able to make decisions “without fear or favour”.
Malaysia has been under intense scrutiny since flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of March 8, earning especially heavy criticism from China for its handling of the aircraft’s mysterious disappearance.
Experts the world over, have also questioned the country’s ability to handle an aviation disaster of such a scale and magnitude, oftentimes suggesting that the Malaysian authorities had acted too slowly in their response to MH370’s disappearance.
Their criticisms were compounded by the angry accusations lobbed at Putrajaya by the next-of-kin of the Chinese passengers aboard the flight.
Among others, they have alleged that Malaysian authorities are covering-up mistakes made in the early days of MH370’s disappearance to avoid perceptions of bungled investigations.
On one recent weekend, a group of irate Chinese families flew to Malaysia to demand answers and even staged a protest outside a hotel that Malaysia Airlines had booked for them.
During the protest, they called Malaysian authorities murderers and vowed never to forgive them for the loss of their loved ones.
Hishammuddin pledged again today that the government will continue to ensure the families of those aboard the missing jetliner stay updated with the ongoing search operation in the Indian Ocean.
He said Malaysia will not scale down efforts to find the aircraft, even if its neighbours pull its assets from the hunt.
“As we move forward, there might be occasions that some countries want to scale down but there are other countries that might come forward,” he pointed out.
Search for MH370’s crucial flight data and cockpit voice recorders has now moved into the slower manual underwater search, after the batteries on the locators of the two black boxes are believed to have expired.
Up to 11 military aircraft, three civil aircraft and 11 ships joined in today’s search.
The centre of the search area lies approximately 2087 kilometres north-west of Perth in the Indian Ocean.
MH370 disappeared on March 8 while en route to Beijing. It was then carrying 239 people on board.
