I wonder if there was a security lapse that allowed offender Ng Ting Hwa to leave the country. The police had kept his passport, so how did he persuade the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to issue him a new one?

Was due diligence exercised before his application was approved? Why was his status not captured in the ICA system when he left the country? On the part of the police, what was done to ensure that he could not apply for a new passport to leave the country legally?

Each new machine-readable passport has a different number, unlike the old passport which used one's identity card number. Was this the disconnect between the police and ICA?

David Han

This article was first published in The Straits Times on June 13, 2008.