Minister for Environment and Water Resources Vivian
Balakrishnan said he hoped to see more Singaporeans pursue the
hawking profession in the future.
Speaking on the sidelines of the opening of a child care centre on
Saturday, Dr Balakrishnan said with more centres opening in the
near future, the next step will be to encourage people to view
hawking more favourably.
"To make sure that there are enough Singaporeans who want to go
into this business ... I have to make sure that we send the message
that there will be places available, there will be reasonable
rentals," he said.
With the announcement of 10 new hawker centres to be built over the
next 10 years, and the removal of minimum bids for stalls in April,
rental prices of hawker stalls have dropped.
"All these factors mean that rentals are going to fall, and I'm
quite happy for that to happen, because our key objective is to
provide good and affordable food for Singaporeans out in the
heartlands," Dr Balakrishnan said.
"We're also looking at the proposal that there should be some form
of training and opportunities to upgrade skills ... We will even
look into proposals like having some form of central purchasing in
order to get better prices through bulk purchases."
"There are many areas we can work on to uplift our hawking
profession, and I think in the years ahead, I want to make it an
attractive and honourable profession for Singaporeans to move into,
and especially for younger Singaporeans," he added.
A social enterprise or cooperative to run the Bukit Panjang hawker
centre, the first of the 10 new hawker centres to be built, will
also be announced as early as June.
The move to allow not-for-profit organisations to run hawker
centres is part of a series of recommendations submitted by a
consultation panel in March, following four months of deliberations
and public consultation.
The Environment and Water Resources Ministry is also looking at
having a single agency to manage the cleaning services for hawker
centres, as suggested by the consultation panel.
Dr Balakrishnan said the objective of such a measure would elevate
standards of hygiene, achieve economies of scale and improve
mechanisation and training in systems.
"We hope we can get both higher standards as well as
cost-effectiveness," he explained.
"But having said that, I also want to caution that over the next
few years, I do want to see the wages of cleaners go up, and I want
to see them go up significantly."
"It's only fair that all of us be prepared if need be, to pay a
little bit more to ensure that the wages of cleaners go up
significantly. That's another area I'm paying attention to," Dr
Balakrishnan said.
