MH370 News 2016: As Officials Search For Missing Plane, Victims' Families Denied Education Fund

Families of the crew aboard the fateful Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 are reportedly still waiting for the release of an education fund set up for children of the flight's staff, more than two years following the plane's disappearance while flying en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Distributing the money has being delayed because of ongoing MH370 investigations as well as lawsuits filed by relatives of passengers, according to a person involved in overseeing the Flagbearer Education Foundation.

“We have been monitoring this situation closely and have been in constant communication with relevant government officials on channelling [sic] the donation to the foundation,” Anne Eu, chair of Chinese medicine company Eu Yan Sang Malaysia, told news outlet Free Malaysia Today. “The foundation will be launched when there is an official announcement by the relevant authorities on the closure of ongoing investigations surrounding the status of MH370.”

But that's news to those awaiting the payout of RM500,000 — more than $126,000 — according to the Malaysia Kini news website. Families of the Flight MH370 crew say they have never even been given a single status update on the fund since it was established in 2014.

"When news of the aircraft's disappearance was still fresh, we (the next of kin) had heard of a few foundations that wanted to help our children, but none of them approached us," said Nur Laila Ngah, the wife of chief steward Wan Said Wan Ismail. Malaysia Kini sourced Nur Laila's quote from the New Straits Times.

It was immediately unclear when the search for Flight MH370 would be concluded. It had been reported in May that authorities expected the search to be concluded in August, but that was before several developments in the investigations, including debris pieces that were found in Mauritius And Mozambique and an Australian aviation expert claiming officials were searching in the wrong area.

Recently, the search has been hampered by inclement weather around the southern Indian Ocean and hasn't yielded any tangible progress in about two months, the Master Herald reported.

Flight MH370 disappeared March 8, 2014, and the most compelling piece of evidence that it may have crashed was a wing piece — a flaperon — found last summer on the shores of Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.