PUTRAJAYA, Nov 12 — In light of the downgrade to Category Two by the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM) will be submitting a proposal to modernise and merge civil aviation laws in the country to the Transport Ministry.
Its board member Ragunath Kesavan told a press conference today that the regulatory body will be sending their proposal to Minister Anthony Loke by the end of the year — with the first phase focused on addressing regulatory concerns.
“The regulator must be independent. That’s why we moved from the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) to CAAM. But in the process, because we are still new, there is an overlap of obligations and responsibilities. So we still have the civil aviation act in place and also the CAAM act.
“So there are two acts now in place, so we need to coordinate and merge it into one. The first part will be regulatory,” said Ragunath.
However, he also pointed out that the regulatory changes are only one part of the 33 outstanding non-compliance issues with FAA’s requirements.
He added that it is a long term plan for CAAM and they are confident that it can be done in 12 months.
Furthermore, there is a need to modernise the regulations and the rules.
One of the issues that were raised by the FAA was CAAM’s lack of power to take penalties or punitive measures against airline operators – touching primarily on aviation legislation and specific operating regulations.
“Basically the regulations, some of them are antiquated, we need to modernise and make it current. For example, we are the regulators but can’t impose penalties.
“If we are going to take action against an operator, we need to have rules in place and a process to carry out hearings and so on,” explained Ragunath.
