Singapore’s beloved hawker culture is about to get even more vibrant than it already is, with 13 new hawker centers set to join the 114 we have now.
According to the National Environment Agency (NEA) yesterday, foodies can expect the new hawker centers to be completed over the next eight years, with the first one set to open in the latter part of next year at the Bukit Canberra sports and community center in Sembawang.
While the NEA hasn’t revealed the locations of the other hawker centers, there’s usually one for every neighborhood, and we know we’ve got new neighborhoods in the works, including Tengah and Bidadari.
Hawkers who set up shop at the 13 new centers will also pay lower-than-normal rent in their first two years of operations under a new Staggered Rent Scheme, which should provide some help in offsetting costs while they establish their businesses.
The NEA said hawkers will pay 80 percent and 90 percent of the cost of regular stall rentals in the first and second year, respectively.
The price of stall rentals is not consistent throughout hawker centers across Singapore, of course. But for comparison’s sake, we know at least three hawker stalls at Our Tampines Hub community center cost S$3,000 each to rent every month, according to an online letter written by the director of the NEA’s hawker centers division, Ivy Ong.
The NEA is also extending the 10 percent reduction on stall rentals to hawkers who are in their second year of operation at the fairly new Pasir Ris Central, Jurong West, and Yishun Park hawker centers. That will last from Sept. 1 to Feb. 29, 2020.
The Staggered Rent Scheme is among the NEA’s efforts to improve hawker center management following an uproar by hawkers and food blogger KF Seetoh after they appointed so-called social enterprise organizations — which ended up being private companies — to run a group of seven newer hawker centers.
The decision to outsource hawker center management was ostensibly made to cut food costs and improve service via the introduction of not-for-profit operators.
But in August 2018, an online post by KF Seetoh went viral for calling out those private companies for running the hawker centers based on “a hard core commercial Food Court management system,” with hawkers having to bear a “laundry list of extra services and charges,” including separate charges for tray-returns and mandatory opening hours.
Today, the seven hawker centers are still operated by these so-called social enterprises, with NTUC Foodfare managing the ones in Bukit Panjang, Kampung Admiralty, and Pasir Ris Central.
With the NEA stepping in with new initiatives like the rental scheme, hopefully, things would be better for affected hawkers.
Since late last year, other initiatives by the NEA include forming feedback groups for hawkers from the new centers and revising contractual terms to ensure hawkers have flexible operating hours.
The NEA is also co-funding dishwashing fees for hawkers at the new centers for the first two years.
Related stories:
SMRT Feedback and KF Seetoh rail against unfair clauses in Our Tampines Hub hawker centre contracts
KF Seetoh takes issue with how Social Enterprise Hawker Centers aren’t sustainable for its hawkers
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