Relatives of
those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 said on Saturday they were
taking the search for the plane into their own hands to try to push
governments to expand the search area along the east African coast.
Flight
MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on its way from
Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, sparking a search in the
southern Indian Ocean that entered its 1,000 day on Saturday.
Members of Voice 370, an MH370
next-of-kin support group, were speaking ahead of a trip to Madagascar,
where they hoped to scour the country’s beaches for debris.
Spokeswoman
Grace Subathirai Nathan said she hoped the trip would help spur the
Malaysian, Chinese and Australian governments to collect debris along
the continental coast where parts from the aircraft had been found.
“After repeated attempts, and
repeated requests for a mobilization of a search along the coastline,
nothing has been done to date,” she told reporters at Kuala Lumpur
airport.
“So it has fallen into our hands to take this search upon ourselves.”
Nathan,
whose mother was on the plane, was among four Malaysians, two Chinese
nationals and a Frenchman who left for Madagascar on Saturday to hunt
for debris and raise awareness of the plane among local communities and
organizations.
Three pieces of debris found on the
beaches of Mauritius, Tanzania and the French island of Reunion, have
been confirmed to be from MH370. Investigators are examining several
other pieces found in Mozambique and South Africa.
The
search is expected to be suspended by the end of the year, when an
Australian-led team completes its scouring of a 120,000-sq-km target
area.
“We want the world to know that just
because the search is about to end, that doesn’t mean to us that the
search is ending,” Nathan said. “There is still a lot at stake.”
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Nick Macfie)
