Airlines allowed to recover costs from foreigners denied entry: ICA
Travellers arriving at the immigration hall at Changi Airport Terminal 2. TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — Foreigners who are turned away from entering Singapore and awaiting repatriation may have to pay for any transportation and accommodation costs incurred because of their denial of entry into the country, according to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).
Under the recommendations made by the International Civil Aviation Organization, airlines are permitted to recover such costs from passengers, the ICA said in a statement yesterday (Oct 29).
The authority was responding to a recent Facebook post, which went viral, by a Vietnamese woman who said that she was denied entry into Singapore despite having studied here previously at one of the top schools as a Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholar.
In a Facebook post on Oct 20 titled “12 hours of horror — my story of Singapore entry refusal”, Ms Thuy Thanh Nguyen, 26, wrote about a “nightmarish ordeal” of being locked overnight in a holding room at Changi Airport with four other Vietnamese girls, having her belongings confiscated and being told to pay a service fee even though she was not offered any food or water after six hours.
Ms Nguyen, who works in an international firm, said her job requires her to fly frequently between Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore for trainings or meetings.
“Every single time I fly into Singapore, as a tourist or business traveller, 90 per cent of the time I’ll be (asked to go into the waiting room), thanks to various reasons — my Vietnamese passport, my common name and my suspicious profile: Single young attractive female traveller from a developing country”, she wrote.
In the past, she would be released shortly after getting her fingerprints scanned, records checked and being interviewed.
However, in the Oct 19 incident, Ms Nguyen said she was held for nearly 12 hours without being asked to produce official documents, and later told to pay S$104 for two hours of using the bunk bed in the holding room, as well as about S$50 to S$100 for the “escort” services by officials.
Ms Nguyen and the other girls also had to sign a declaration form stating that they did not have enough cash at hand to pay for the services — which meant that the airline would have to bear the costs incurred instead.
In response to TODAY’s queries, the ICA said such fees do not fall under its purview as travellers who are “assessed to be ineligible for a visit pass will be refused entry and handed over to the relevant airline staff pending repatriation”.
“The airline staff will make arrangements for their accommodation in the Inadmissible Passenger room,” the ICA said in its statement.
In a telephone interview from Ho Chi Minh City today, Ms Nguyen also expressed concern at the lack of “transparency” in the repatriation process.
“We were waiting in the room till 4am, and no one told us what was going on,” she said.
The ICA stressed that any visitor issued with a visit pass is not permitted to engage in any form of employment or business “without a valid work pass approved by the relevant authority”.
Ms Nguyen said she will be getting her employer to issue a letter for future travels.
“At the end of the day, I do believe in the screening process by ICA ... I just thought that since I’ve been here (in Singapore) for so long, there wouldn’t be a chance I’d actually get (detained) … It’s just unfortunate that this incident happened,” she said.
