KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 4 ― Malaysia Airlines (MAS) must be independently audited and its accounts presented in Parliament to ensure those responsible for the flag carrier’s losses since 2008 are held accountable, PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar said today.
The second term Lembah Pantai MP said Putrajaya has the obligation to expose MAS's finances to Parliamentary scrutiny as the public have the right to know why the carrier kept losing money despite costing taxpayers billions in infusions since 2001.
She said the audit was necessary following remarks made by MAS Employees Union secretary Jabarullah Abdul Kadir that the directors of the company must be blamed for MAS's financial woes.
“I demand the government explain in details and table MAS's financial report including its profits or losses from its operations since 2008 in Parliament so there will be no more questions about its accounts.
“Furthermore, an independent international forensic auditing firm must be employed to prepare the forensic audit to provide answers as to why MAS had failed to make profit after several fund injections,” Nurul Izzah said in a statement today.
In an interview with financial daily The Edge in June, Jabarullah the airline’s financial troubles were the result of mismanagement.
Nurul said the claims merit a full audit on MAS directors as they have failed to push the carrier back into profitability, which led to the current scenario in which some 6,000 employees may be retrenched in an impending overhaul.
“The MAS management must also be held responsible for the welfare of its staffs who will be affected by this failure,” she said.
MAS’s main shareholder Khazanah Nasional Berhad announced last week that almost a third of the airline’s 20,000-strong staff, or 6,000 workers, would be laid off as part of the restructuring exercise.
Sovereign wealth fund Khazanah made a RM1.38-billion buyout offer this month to take Malaysia Airlines private as a first step in restructuring the national carrier which traces its beginnings to the 1930s.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has said “painful steps” need to be taken to overhaul the airline that racked up RM4.9 billion in losses since the start of 2011.
When tabling the recovery plan, Khazanah managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar said MAS was expected to return to profitability in three years after its delisting at the end of 2017 and relisting possibly in 2018 or 2019.
Nurul's father and Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had also criticised the mass retrenchment programme, saying the staffs were made scapegoats to the top management's failure.
