Malaysia Airlines’ requires restructuration of management according to NUFAM
The National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (Nufam) has urged the government to review Malaysia Airlines’ (MAB) management position before pumping more money into the ailing national carrier.
Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz was quoted yesterday by Nikkei Asia as saying the airline’s sole shareholder, Khazanah Nasional, had been tasked with ensuring it “continues to be in the position of strength to support the economy when it recovers”.
The Edge Weekly last week reported that MAB may be seeking as much as RM2.1 billion as financial aid from Khazanah, after announcing an urgent restructuring of RM16 billion worth of debt in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Malaysia Airlines finances already problematic before the pandemic
While Nufam applauded the government’s decision to help the airline, it said it did not want MAB to “abuse taxpayers’ money” as it had already lost billions before the Covid-19 outbreak.
“We thank the government for its support in reviving the airline industry and to offer help to the affected industry workers, but we want it to look seriously into those issues of huge losses.
“There are accountability issues here and, therefore, as a union, we are raising the red flag now,” it said in a statement today.
The union said it was “unfair” for the government to keep pumping more money into MAB “only for the airline to continue maintaining the same people responsible for the losses over the years”.
Malaysia Airlines management in continues legal procedures with the Unions
Claiming that there had been “constant work environment disharmony” since MAB was restructured in 2015, it added that there had been abuse of power by top-level management against low-ranking workers who were retrenched or asked to leave during the pandemic.
Nufam also alleged that the airline had “unnecessarily spent millions of ringgit in taxpayers’ money in unnecessary legal disputes with the union”.
It took the government to task for “ignoring these huge losses” and continuing to pay “top salaries to the same team of people to manage the national asset and workers’ welfare”.
