Putting hawker centres under private social enterprise management might no longer be the way to go in Singapore for future hawker centres.

This was revealed by Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources, Amy Khor on Sept. 7.

Hefty costs

This came on the heels of an expose by foodie-critic-consultant KF Seetoh, who shed light on the heavy operational costs incurred by hawkers in such hawker centres.

According to Khor, the government is "evaluating" and "will make tweaks to the models" before deciding on an appropriate model for newer hawker centres.

The government plans to build another 13 hawker centres by 2027.

Currently, there are seven hawker centres run by private companies under the social enterprise model: Fei Siong Social Enterprise, NTUC Foodfare, Timbre+Hawkers, Hawker Management by Koufu, and OTMH by Kopitiam.

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Tender criteria

Khor also mentioned that "rental and operating costs" is one of the "key tender evaluation criteria":

"Those that propose lower rentals and operating costs are the ones that will be considered more favourably. Indeed we are very mindful that we need to ensure that the hawkers can make a decent livelihood."

She did not elaborate on how such operating costs factor in the tender, nor how these private companies manage to win tenders.

But based on interviews with hawkers reported by the media so far, the operating costs incurred in private social enterprise hawker centres can be twice the amount hawkers operating out of the National Environment Agency-run hawker centres pay.

Top image by Joshua Lee