Demand for sexual services refund among quirky Singapore consular requests
Foreign minister reveals strange demands made to overseas missions in Facebook post
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 05 June, 2014, 2:59pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 05 June, 2014, 3:29pm
Agence France-Presse
One Singaporean tourist claimed “he received a smaller piece of KFC chicken compared to what the locals had” and asked the MFA to investigate. Photo: Reuters
Singapore’s foreign minister on Thursday urged his globetrotting countrymen to be more considerate of the city-state’s consular services and revealed cases of abuse, including a man’s demand for help getting a refund for sexual services.
K. Shanmugam, who is also the law minister, said in a Facebook post that the number of overseas trips made by Singaporeans had surged to 7 million last year, compared to 3.6 million a decade ago.
Singaporean citizens number 3.31 million, just over 60 per cent of the wealthy city-state’s 5.4 million population.
“We handled over 3,000 consular cases last year. Many cases are genuine. But sometimes we do get odd requests,” Shanmugam said.
In one instance, Shanmugam said a Singaporean sought Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) intervention “for a refund after he had gotten illegal sexual services in a foreign country”.
“He wasn’t satisfied with what he had gotten. We had to tell him that MFA could not help!”
Shanmugam said the ministry also declined to intervene when a man demanded an investigation over alleged racial discrimination while overseas.
The man had claimed “he received a smaller piece of KFC chicken compared to what the locals had.”
“He wanted MFA to investigate this instance and seek justice in that foreign country for the unfair treatment he claimed to have received,” Shanmugam said.
In another case, a Singaporean man was also turned away by consular officers after he implored their help to convince his foreign girlfriend to divorce her husband, so that he could marry her.
“We want Singaporeans to marry and have children. But there are limits,” wrote Shanmugam. “We have to draw the line between what is personal responsibility and what’s not.”
The light-hearted post was shared virally, with one Facebook user describing it as an account of “the entitlement mentality of some Singaporeans.”
The MFA has 49 overseas missions and 30 honorary consuls-general.
Singapore followed Britain’s lead in divulging some of the odder requests filed to its diplomats abroad.
In May last year, the British Foreign Office said its embassies had been asked if they could silence a noisy cockerel, order an unfit husband to shape up, and check out the credentials of a woman one man had met online.
