Maggots, hygiene and relationships

“ONLY in Malaysia you get hauled up because you cared about the hygiene of a rubbish bin.’’

This is one of the many comments on the social media after AirAsia Bhd communications head Aziz Laikar posted a video on Twitter on Monday, Dec 24 showing a rubbish bin filled with maggots at KLIA2.

He went further to question if that defines cleanliness since the airport operator, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) had just “boasted of its performance in airport management for October.’’ The industry regulator, Mavcom, had even commended MAHB for exceeding service quality targets.

There were also other comments on the social media questioning if Aziz did the right thing by posting a video of a maggot-filled bin or should he had just turned a blind eye to it.

Whatever may have driven him to post the video, surely, he did not expect a call from the police.

When the twit went viral, MAHB obviously saw this as an attempt to “hurt its image’’ and to safeguard itself resorted to bring the police in to handle the issue. Mind you, this is not a robbery or murder case, this is just someone putting up a twit to show that the bins may not be as clean as they appear to be as there are squirmers in it.

So Aziz was supposed to meet the police on Wednesday but later he posted to say that he will not have to meet the police after all.

One wonders what promoted the change in heart on the part of MAHB to not pursue the matter with the police when in the first place it just rushed to get the police involved.

A court battle seems to be looming since MAHB has sent a notice demanding RM36mil in unpaid passenger service charges (PSC) that AirAsia says it will not collect from passengers. MAHB wants RM73 collected from each passenger, but AirAsia feels the PSC should only be RM50 for KLIA2 and that is why it is only collecting RM50 instead of RM73. That is a separate matter but it shows that these two are in for a long drawn battle again.

The question some are asking is, would MAHB had acted in the same manner if it was a travelling passenger instead of an AirAsia employee that had posted the maggot-filled bin video, and would it had got the police involved?

While the maintenance schedule may be in place, it only takes 20 hours to 24 hours for maggots to breed.

Whatever happened, and in the manner it happened does not bode well as the airport is a public domain and cleanliness is key for passengers who are paying PSC to have a comfortable and clean place in between flights. The last thing they want is creepy crawlies. A proactive instead of defensive approach in reputation management would have been ideal.