While unlicensed masseuses question the efficacy of stricter legislation, the police remain committed to clamping down on such businesses. Then times got tough. With her husband's salary not being "high enough", and to support her three children, she decided to stop being a housewife, and turned to a job she was familiar with, having once done it in China.
To her family, Coco not her real name , 43, has been the boss of her own small, one-woman massage parlour for five years. Of late, Coco has had more to fear. These efforts represent an attempt to clean up what appears to be an ongoing issue in Singapore. Most recently available figures show the number of illegal massage parlours increasing by 40 per cent from to Of the odd errant operators identified in , 40 per cent were engaged in vice-related offences.
This year, the police have taken to issuing a monthly average of around four announcements of arrests stemming from raids on such establishments, compared to the second half of , when there was one or fewer such announcements per month on average.
Vanessa Ho, who heads local sex worker rights group Project X, said that just by walking the ground, she had observed an increase in the number of targeted raids on massage parlours. In the Jalan Besar and Beach Road areas, which have been the subject of repeated police raids, residents have expressed concern to their Member of Parliament MP Ms Denise Phua over a perceived increase in the number of massage parlours and related vice activities.
Along Lavender Street, which is in Mr Heng's ward, there are at least four recently-shuttered massage establishments. With signage still intact, they stand directly in front of the Bendemeer Light estate. A resident of four years there, Teresa, 38, has seen plenty of skimpily-dressed women openly walking around and hanging their clothes out to dry. For more than 20 years now, Mr and Mrs Ong have run an auto accessories shop directly opposite the stretch of massage parlours.
