Singapore - Singapore's parliament passed controversial legislation which allows reimbursement of living organ donors, media reports said Wednesday.

After a heated two-day debate, in which some legislators raised concerns that the new law might lead to open organ trading, four of the 84 members of parliament abstained the final vote and one voted against, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

Eighty-two legislators in Singapore's parliament are from the People's Action Party, which has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965.

Not all legislators were convinced, although Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan had assured parliament that the new law "is not to legalize organ trading."

"We are correcting our current extreme position of criminalizing all kinds of payment to the donor," Khaw said.

Singapore already had a legal system to prevent organ trading, he said. "And we will be strengthening it," Khaw added.

The new law, which also contained some other changes, allows living organ donors to be reimbursed the costs for items like travel, accommodation, costs of domestic care and child care, loss of income and long-term medical care.

Legislator Christopher de Souza objected the new law, saying "the framework in the bill could be the subject of abuse."

Another dissenter, Halimah Yacob, said that many foreign workers in Singapore, who are hit hard by the recession, could become "a ready and vulnerable pool of organ donors to be exploited and abused."

"To a desperate foreign worker, even a reimbursement of 10,000 Singapore dollars (6,600 US dollars) would be attractive compared to going home empty-handed with a huge debt waiting for him," the report quoted her as saying.

The Singapore government proposed to change the law after ailing retail magnate Tang Wee Sung was jailed for a day and fined 17,000 Singapore dollars in June last year for trying to buy a kidney from an Indonesian donor.

Tang finally received a kidney from former organized crime boss Tan Chor Jin, who was hanged in a Singapore prison in December for the killing of a nightclub owner.

The case prompted the government to amend the law to allow living organ donators to get monetary compensation. (dpa)