Recently, I was visited by Ministry of Manpower (MOM) personnel and informed that my home address had been falsely used by a certain foreign worker to register his place of residence.

I was advised that I could log in to the MOM portal to block my address so that it cannot be used for registration of residence by foreign workers. Upon logging in to the portal, I discovered to my dismay that another foreign worker had registered my address as his place of residence on Aug 2 last year.

I recall a report last year in which MOM said it had received close to 500 reports of private addresses falsely registered as foreign workers' home addresses over a five-month period.

Yet, only 19 employers of such workers had been fined and only 13 work permits had been revoked.

Under Chapter 201, Section 13 of the National Registration Act, it is an offence if any person informs a registration officer of an address as a contact address that is false.

Shouldn't all the workers in the nearly 500 cases have been taken to task?

To prevent similar cases from happening again, information provided must be verified.

There must be a way to do this.

For instance, to verify whether an address used by a foreign registrant is valid, he could be asked to show a copy of the electricity bill of the address.

If he is a tenant, he should be able to ask the house owner for a copy of the bill for the purpose of address registration. And the house owner should be required to provide the document.

I have made an online police report as I believe an offence has been committed.

Ong Kok Lam