A resident who can’t be bothered to get rid of a single cockroach outside his/her house by his/herself directly messaged a Member of Parliament (MP) to get the job done.

Tampines GRC MP Baey Yam Keng probably sighed audibly out loud upon reading a request sent in by a resident in his constituency — a rather trifling appeal for him to get Town Council workers to handle a lone cockroach at an HDB staircase. Instead of getting a rolled-up newspaper out, smacking the pest and tossing its lifeless corpse into the bin, the resident would rather demand that the town council get someone to get rid of it. A picture of the roach was even painstakingly captured.

View photos Photos: Baey Yam Keng / Facebook More

The MP — who’s also the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Transport and Culture, Community and Youth — was civil in his response, at least. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Baey acknowledged that the resident could have bigger concerns such as potential pest infestations and the service quality of government service hotlines, but also pointed out the absurdity of the request.

Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin joined in the fun, sharing a post about a pesky resident who expressed displeasure that the Marina Parade GRC MP was not personally responding to repeated cases of cockroach sightings brought up to the town council.

“There is clearly no infestation and many man-hours have been expended to follow through each time,” Tan wrote. “Sigh.”

This article, MP gets complaint by resident over a single pesky cockroach in the neighborhood, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. For more Coconuts stories, you can download our app, sign up for our newsletters, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.