Press Statement By DAP Secretary-General And MP For Bagan Lim Guan Eng In Kuala Lumpur On 9 August 2014.
Any restructuring or rationalization plan to rescue Malaysia Airline System(MAS) must necessarily ensure that the rights and benefits of the 20,000 MAS employees be retained as well as the unfair contracts benefiting BN cronies be terminated. DAP is willing to have an open mind on MAS’ statement that its 69.37% owner Khazanah Nasional, will offer 27 cents for each share that Khazanah does not own.
Khazanah will have to pay nearly RM 1.4 billion in cash payments to buy up the remaining 30.67% shares Khazanah does not own for MAS to go private. However these 2 preconditions stated above must be met.
DAP is not surprised that the move to delist MAS from Bursa Malaysia is due to the airline’s unfavourable financial performance with accumulated losses of RM8.53 billion as at March 31, 2013. MAS reported a RM 279 million net loss for the first three months of 2014, and is expected to record the biggest quarterly net loss in its history for the 2nd quarter of 2014, due to the tragic loss of MH370 and MH17.
Over the past five years, Khazanah has also pumped in RM 5.7 billion via three rights issues. Since 1998 Khazanah has allocated about RM 19 billion worth of rights issues and government-backed debt. MAS is also reported to be using up cash at an alarming rate of RM 5 million a day, which will soon exhaust whatever is left of its RM 3 billion cash hoard. With debts of over RM 11.5 billion, there is an urgent need to undertake the restructuring, covering the airline’s operations, business model, finances, staff and the regulatory environment.
Khazanah must come up with a concrete plan to rescue MAS, which must include the adoption of international practices of open competitive tenders and performance-based assessment for all workers, including top management. Khazanah should not take the easy way out of blaming MAS ordinary employees but focus on the decision makers, who had approved unfair contracts to BN cronies at uncompetitive prices that deepened MAS’ financial losses.
Despite the subsidies and grants of tens of billions of ringgit given by Malaysian taxpayers, MAS has shown that it cannot compete with Air Asia, which is a miraculous success story of Malaysian entrepreneurship despite not getting a single cent from Malaysian taxpayers. These are lessons that should be learnt by MAS – not the scandalous escalation of cost overruns and delays in the KLIA2 project, that rose from an initial budget of RM 1.6 billion to RM 4 billion and yet was delayed by 3 years!
LIM GUAN ENG
民主行动党秘书长兼峇眼区国会议员林冠英于2014年8月9日在吉隆坡发表的声明：
任何为拯救马航而展开的重组或合理化机制（Rationalization）计划，除了必需中止所有利惠国阵朋党的不公平合约外，也务必确保马航2万名职员的权益及福利获得保障。
任何为拯救马航而展开的重组或合理化机制（Rationalization）计划，除了必需中止所有利惠国阵朋党的不公平合约外，也务必确保马航2万名职员的权益及福利获得保障。民主行动党对马航的声明持着开放的态度，即其69.37%股权拥有者– 国库控股，将会以每股27仙的价格向小股东献购其未持有的马航股权。
国库控股须付出将近14亿令吉的现金支付，以购回其所未持有的 30.67%马航股要，以私有化马航。不过，任何私有化举动的前提是，必需符合上述的两个条件。
民主行动党对马航基于其不佳的财务业绩，即截至2013年3月31日为止，累积亏损高达85亿3千万令吉而决定从马来西亚股票交易所中除牌的举动，并不感到惊讶。马航在2014年首季，创下了2亿7900万令吉的净亏，并预计在马航MH370离奇失踪及MH17事故后，其第二季的净亏额将创下史上新高。
在过去的5年，国库控股经已透过三次配售新股，注入了57亿令吉。从1998年起，国库控股已经分配了总额约190亿令吉的供股，以及政府支持的债券。据报道称，马航以惊人的速度，每天花掉500万令吉，这样下去，马航很快就会耗尽其现金储备中所剩余的3亿令吉。 在拥有超过115亿令吉债务的情况下，马航急需重组，包括航空公司的运作、商业模式、财务、职员及其监管环境。
国库控股需拿出一个具体的计划来拯救马航，即需要采纳国际招标的公开竞争招标惯例，以及对所有员工，包括公司高层实施绩效制评估。国库控股不应该怪罪马航现有员工，反之应该将焦点放在马航的决策者身上– 即是那些批准让国阵朋党以不具竞争力的价格，获得对马航不公平的合约，进而加剧马航的财务亏损之决策者。
尽管马来西亚纳税人缴付了数百亿令吉的津贴及补助金，但马航却经证明了它根本无法与亚航竞争。亚航在没有获得马来西亚纳税人分毫的情况下，却能创下马来西亚创业奇迹般的成功故事。这些教训都是马航必需去学习的– 不要像吉隆坡第二国际机场（KLIA2）般，从原有的16亿令吉预算，超支至40亿令吉，更延迟了3年！
林冠英