Knowing a thing or two about Asia, there is probably a bit more to this. As a responsible approach control duty officer you can do two things: either the aerodrome is operational, in which case you acknowledge any inbound traffic contact and facilitate approach and landing using all available resources and your best abilities OR if you believe that the met (or any other) conditions are unsuitable for continued safe operations, you declare the airport closed, and instruct all incoming traffic to divert. My reading is that in the twelve minutes spent discussing they did neither, trying to avoid making any decision and shifting responsibility to the crew, while allowing the weather conditions to deteriorate further.
Of course this does not make them any more guilty (or I'd rather say accountable) than the pilots, but they are alive to stand on the edge of the carpet while the pilots, sadly, are not.
Last edited by andrasz; 15th Apr 2016 at 13:22.