Stumbled upon this link which said that the photographer is the owner...
Professional Photographers Association (Singapore) - Copyright Issues
I had read that before. I remember starting a thread about that and no one gave me any answers (within expectations). That PPAS article was supposedly written by a lawyer but I am more inclined to believe otherwise, for as far as I know, in countries like UK and Australia, copyright for personal photography also defaults to the client, only US defaults all original works to the creator. We are more similar to UK and Australia in terms of legal structure.
Ipo website and the statues is also consistent with this. Also it's better to err in the safe side.