Why dismiss 6,000 MAS employees, asks former MD

Why is it that the powers that be seemed to not take into account the Open Skies Policy that will be implemented next year, and that more staff might be needed for this?

Are they not paying attention, or do they purposely not want to understand that MAS might resort to being a mere domestic air carrier if the amount of staff are downsized?

These were some of the questions posed to Khazanah Nasional Bhd (Khazanah) by former MAS managing director, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman when asked for his opinion on the recently announced MAS Recovery Plan.

"All the suggestions made in the plan were generally good, but I feel there are some crucial things that need to be considered by those who worked on the restructuring plan.

"They said they wanted to lessen the workforce, but how did they come to that decision and what is the basis for downsizing the company? All these were not explained," he told Astro AWANI when contacted Sunday.

Commenting on the Open Skies Policy, Abdul Aziz said the decision reduce the MAS workforce is an oddity and should not happen at the initial stages of restructuring.

“How did they make that decision? How many routes, pilots, crew and staff are involved in this downsizing effort?

“Rather than dismissing employees, they should be hiring more people instead,” he said.

“The Open Skies Policy will come into effect in six months time; they should have a plan for this but it wasn’t mentioned in the 12-point plan at all," Abdul Aziz added.

The ASEAN Open Skies Policy that will come into effect in 2015 is aimed at broadening the connectivity between Malaysia and other countries.

Through bilateral air service agreements, the policy would allow Malaysian airliners and foreign airlines to fly without restriction in terms of frequency of service, flight capacity, type of aircraft, routes and the number of airlines allowed between Malaysia and a particular country.

According to the Transport Ministry, this would help to expand Malaysia's air transportation sector as well as the tourism industry, at the same time increase the access of Malaysian citizens to other countries and vice versa.

Meanwhile, it was recently reported that RAM Holdings Bhd chief economist, Dr yeah Kim Leng, had described the move to reduce the number of MAS employees as a wise choice, something that needed to be done to bring the ailing national carrier back to profitability.

It is understood that the bloated MAS workforce had contributed much to the airline's operational cost, and through the reduction in staff, MAS could now consider dropping its routes which are not as profitable.