DAP sends it deepest condolence to the two airmen killed in the latest RMAF Nuri helicopter crash off Penang on Wednesday and expresses its gravest concern that three other airmen are still missing.
While the announcement by the Defence Minister, Datuk Syed Hamid Albar that all of RMAF’s 33 Nuri helicopters would be temporarily grounded pending checks on their airworthiness is welcome, the Defence Minister owes a fuller explanation to Parliament on the latest RMAF air disaster.
This is because a day before the Nuri crash, Syed Hamid had assured Parliament that all RMAF equipment conformed to all quality specifications.
The Defence Minister also brushed aside press reports in August that the retiring Royal Malaysian Air Force chief Lt. Jen Datuk Seri Abdul Ghani Aziz had castigated ex-RMAF officers turned defence equipment suppliers for selling “unsuitable and obsolete equipment” at the expense of the safety of their former colleagues and “the operational readiness of the RMAF”.
Speaking at the presentation of the United Nations medals to 27 RMAF members on 8th August, a day before his retirement, Ghani spoke about the supply of “inferior equipment” and was reported to have urged the arms dealers who were “profit-driven” to stop “taking advantage of your connections with serving RMAF personnel by selling out self-respect and the safety and integrity of the air force”.
Although Syed Hamid had maintained that he had not received any report about RMAF equipment not conforming to specifications, the latest Nuri crash must have raised disturbing questions in public mind about the standards and safety of RMAF equipments, especially as the Nuri crash is the ninth RMAF air incident this year alone. Excluding the latest Nuri incident, 60 lives had been lost since the commissioning of the Nuri helicopters by RMAF in 1968 in eleven air disasters.
(19/10/96)