SINGAPORE : The Land Transport Authority has said that there will be no SEX number-plates on the roads.

But one motorist feels that the LTA has gone too far by banning all 5 vowels as the middle letter.

23-year-old Mervyn Sek has been dreaming of owning a SEK licence-plate since he was 12.

In his posting to Channel NewsAsia's web forum, he said he has been waiting a lifetime for the SEK plate.

So he thought his dream would come true when the SD series goes on to the SE series.

Mervyn said: "In S'pore more often than not, as you know, our licence plates are quite restricted. As such we don't really get a chance to have personalised license plates, unlike America for example. It's very rare that you'll be able to get your own surname on your licence plate."

He had even instructed the car salesman to bid for the number-plate and put down $1,500 for the bid.

But all that's of no consequence now, since LTA has decided that the SD series will go on to the SF series.

Mervyn said: "I really hope that LTA can reconsider, and allow for such flexibility, perhaps for SEX since it's such a sensitive issue, we can do with the SE series without the SEX. What LTA is doing is, they trying to uproot the whole garden just to remove a weed from the whole garden, this is definitely an over-sensitive move on their part."

Besides Sek, there are many other surnames that won't make it to licence-plates.

These include Saw, See, Sia, Sim, Soh, Sum.

In just this section for the letter S, there are at least 50 surnames that have 3 letters with a vowel in the middle.

Besides surnames starting with S, there are other common surnames like Lee, Lim and Tan, all of which the LTA's book of rules has closed on.

For Mervyn, his dream of owning this car model with an SEK plate can only live on in a toy-car with tiny plates he made himself.