I READ with great interest the commentaries ('Singapore's
amnesia of the taste buds'; Sept 22 and 'Celebrate our hawkers with
Culinary Medallion'; Sept 14) which suggested a few ways to address
the decline in the quality of Singapore's hawker food.
While creative, I do not think those suggestions alone will nip
this problem in the bud.
One look at last Tuesday's report ('Sengkang market turns into
ghost town') and it becomes clear that we may have overlooked an
important factor that is more economic in nature: rising rentals of
hawker stalls.
If we want good hawker food to flourish in Singapore, we must
stop squeezing out our hawkers.
While upgrading hawker centres is a good idea, raising rentals
simply makes the hawkers' life harder.
In addition, turning over the running of hawker centres to
private operators is a bad idea as their main motive will always be
to maximise profits. They will bid high to get the right to run the
centre and then squeeze the hawkers to recoup their
investments.
Hawkers cannot mark up the prices of their food too much. This
means that for them to earn more, they must sell more. However,
there is a limit to how many bowls or plates they can sell each
day.
Increasing rentals raises the cost of doing business
significantly for them and they will have no choice but to resort
to cost-cutting measures like changing the quality of ingredients
used and how they are procured. Is it any wonder that the quality
of hawker fare has gone down across the board?
If we do not want to lose our hawker food heritage, we must
build an environment that makes it financially viable for existing
hawkers and even their successors to do well.
Our hawker food culture is something worth keeping and the
Government should continue to nurture that which is uniquely
Singaporean.
Joseph Khoo
