At the initial stages when the new CEO reported for work, we were given a very rosy picture of a reasonably good severance package for those who will asked to leave Malaysia Airlines (MAS).

However, recent reports of the staff being subjected to inhumane and unorthodox treatment without a standard procedure being implemented for everyone, serves a shock treatment.

We all want MAS to be rescued and returned to profitability but not at the expense of treating the unfortunate staff who have been asked to leave, as mere pawns in a chess game to be used at will without any proper decency and consideration.

A new CEO, when appointed, wants to impress his employers but in so doing, can he also forget the staff who are leaving a long and dedicated service to the airlines and may have difficulty to find another job when at this time the economic situation here has declined.

These measures may be termed as painful exercises in the corporate world to turn around a failing entity that is so necessary and relevant for a national identity. Nonetheless, when reducing the staff strength, we have to show our human compassion for someone who is suddenly without any income but having a family of young growing children to support.

A foreign CEO with vast experience and coming from a European and American environment, may want to use his methods gained from his long service there, in an Asian environment which may not be suited here. Show some sympathy to these unfortunate ones whose severance package is nowhere near their Western counterparts where the latter are better protected.

With all due respects to this CEO, do not try to ‘skin’ the men or women at the bottom but focus at the top where the bleeding and rotting has taken place all this while to give MAS this ugly image.

If the top management is firm, solid and capable, then those in the middle and bottom lines will definitely work their best to be productive and accountable.

Downsizing is one of the easiest austerity drive measures but not necessarily the most important, and sometimes it serves like the popular idiom, pulling wool over eyes.

Do not be of the impression that what works in the Western world, can also be employed here in totality.

In conclusion, I urge you to be more humane and sympathetic to the staff who have been asked to leave. Being unemployed is itself a traumatic feeling, let alone being confronted with an indecent redundancy package.