MH370: Transport minister says gov't still doing its best to search for plane

KUALA LUMPUR: Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said the government and authorities concerned are still doing all they can to locate the missing MH370.

He said effort was still being made despite the government declaring it was an accident.

"It is difficult for the next of kins (NoKs) to come to terms. Though we announced it, we are still looking for the missing plane," he said, when asked to comment on the 15 NoKs of Chinese passengers who arrived in Malaysia early today morning and staged a protest a sit-in protest in front of the MAS office as a sign of rejecting the declaration that the plane was lost in an accident.

"We, the team comprising of Malaysia, Australia and China are in deep discussion on what to do from now until March 8, the date of the one year anniversary since its disappearance. We are planning what to do to commemorate the loss," said Liowat a press conference after officiating the launch of road safety campaign in conjunction with Chinese New Year (CNY) 2015 at Terminal Bersepadu Selatan (TBS) here, today.

He said though he understood and sympathised with the families, they were doing all they could to bring a closure to the incident.

Liow added the government had instructed MAS to extend whatever support and cooperation they could to the NoKs as they were going through the loss of their loved ones.

"The NoKs are also being updated on latest developments so that they are kept in the loop of what is being done to search the missing aircraft. The search mission will continue," he added.

Liow said the Government was also in discussion with China on the issue including the need for more vessels to search for the missing plane.

"It's not an easy task as it can't be carried out by one country as the Indian Ocean is 6000 metres deep. We need some cooperation. We have used our allocation in the joint search operation between Australia and Malaysia by ordering three vessels with one of them contributed by Petronas. We are now planning with China to join the search mission," he added.

In 2014, Liow represented Malaysia at the International Civil Aviation Organization to recommend several measures to increase aviation safety standards which included real-time tracking, increasing airplane's black box capacity and its battery life duration as well.