Human Resources Minister Richard Riot Jaem declined to offer reasons for why his ministry will not be referring the cases of 3,600 former Malaysia Airlines Systems (MAS) workers to the Industrial Court.

Despite previously saying that a formal reply would be issued, he stuck by his previous statement when contacted today.

“That is the reply. We don’t need to explain the reasons,” he told Malaysiakini in a text message, but declined to comment further.

Following the minister’s statement last week, the National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (Nufam) said that they were “caught off guard” as no official correspondence about the decision had been sent to the workers affected, many of whom were cabin crew.

The union had also demanded an explanation for the decision, and asked why it had taken the ministry two years to arrive at it.

“And how can a decision like this be made by one man? We should let the court decide (if the cases have any basis), the workers want their day in court,” Nufam president Ismail Nasaruddin had said.

A loss-making enterprise for many years, MAS was delisted, privatised and given wholly to government sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd in 2015 to be resuscitated.

As part of its RM6 billion rescue plan, the fund retrenched 30 percent (6,000 people) of the airline’s 20,000 strong workforce.

The Malaysian Airline System Berhad (Administration) Act 2015 was passed in Parliament to facilitate the terminations.