Cockroaches do a good job of pushing our buttons of fear and disgust, even though these reactions have been established to be highly irrational.

While the extent of the reactions can vary between people, it would appear that for some, the experience of fear and disgust is particularly strong.

On Dec. 11, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tampines GRC, Baey Yam Keng, took to Facebook to share a resident's email and photo over a cockroach at a staircase, in which the resident repeatedly chased the Town Council to remove the cockroach as soon as possible.

Unhappy Town Council was not fast enough

In his email to Baey, the resident wrote about how he first notified the Town Council about a live cockroach (misspelled as "life cockroach) via phone call at 3.30pm on Dec. 10.

The resident added that the operator had presumably requested for a photo of the cockroach. She had also supposedly replied that she would notify the officer-in-charge and inform the worker to remove the cockroach.

The resident then voiced his unhappiness over how it was already 5.15pm, but the cockroach was supposedly still around.

The email concluded with the resident renewing his request for the removal of the cockroach "immediately" and an additional complaint of the difficulty in getting through the Town Council hotline.

Baey gave his response in the caption to his post, thanking the resident for "taking the trouble to get through the hotline and monitoring the whereabouts of the cockroach", and noted that the letter raised two bigger issues:

• Whether the cockroach was indicative of an infestation.
• The need to improve the Town Council's Hotline.

Baey then ended his post with a question in the form of a hashtag:

"#paytowncounciltocatchonecockroach ?"

This drew a response from MP and Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin, who noted that Baey had "cockroaches issues too!" and shared his own experience of a similar situation.

Unhappy that Tan Chuan-Jin did not personally respond

In his own post, Tan stated that the Town Council had been repeatedly emailed by an individual, whose mother supposedly lives within Tan's ward of Kembangan - Chai Chee, about an alleged cockroach infestation.

Tan highlighted that the Town Council had responded to his emails in earnest by going down to check each time the matter was raised but the individual was supposedly still unhappy that Tan himself had not personally responded to his emails.

Tan stated that each check had failed to reveal the evidence of an infestation, adding that such checks in turn required plenty of time and manpower resources.

Tan also shared the photos that he had been supposedly sent by the individual about the alleged infestation.

Here are the photos in case you can't see the post:

Just one out of many issues our MPs must deal with we guess.

Top image photos from Tan Chuan-Jin and Baey Yam Keng Facebook