According to Firstpost, debt-saddled Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is expected to fire 20,000 of its employees in an effort to restructure and start over as a smaller airline focusing mainly on the domestic sector instead of operating international flights, according to a media report on Monday.
The entire workforce of 20,000 employees will be given termination letters, after which two-thirds of them will be rehired. It will either be tears of joy or sorrow when they are handed their termination or reemployment letters in a matter of days, The Hindu reported.
Executive Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mohammad Faiz Azmi, has been hired as senior administrator to overlook this transition period, along with CEO Christoph Mueller.
Malaysia Airlines, one of Malaysia's largest state-owned enterprises suffered two air disasters of MH370 and MH17 last year. This will be the first instance that a government-linked company (GLC) has laid off its entire workforce, but this is part of a restructuring plan to revive the company, riddled with debts for several years now, much before the air tragedies took place. The company was not making profits since 2008, and in three years up to 2013, cumulative losses reached had reached a total of $1.3 Billion, according to CNN Money.
In August 2014, Khazanah Nasional Bhd, the MAS's only shareholder, revealed a restructuring plan to revive the airline, which included job-cuts, a capital investment of about RM 6 Billion and the formation of a new company to run the airline business, The Malaysian Insider reported.
In March last year, Flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew members vanished on it's way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, and nearly four months later, Flight MH17, with 289 people on board, crashed in eastern Ukraine, after the plane was shot down amidst conflict in the area between government forces and pro-Russian rebels.
