Amidst the furore surrounding hawker centres run by social enterprises, Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor has come out to explain the initiative, and assure Singaporeans that more is being done.

Calling them Socially-Conscious Enterprise Hawker Centres (SEHC), Khor said in Parliament on Nov. 19 that as a trial, the SEHC model was hard to get right from the start.

Khor said that the National Environment Agency (NEA) must strike a balance between serving the public and ensuring the well-being of hawkers.

"Residents should have access to affordable food in a clean setting for all three meals. At the same time, hawkers must be able to make a decent living, under fair tenancy terms and conditions."

Touching on the issue of rent, Khor said that rentals do not directly affect food prices.

According to a 2014 study done by the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), rental only took up 12 per cent of hawkers' costs. 76 per cent covered manpower and the cost of raw materials.

Khor added that hawkers "generally price food according to what the market can bear", and food prices are influenced by competition in the vicinity and the demographic profile of customers.

"The median rental of stalls in SEHCs is about S$2,000 per month," said Khor, "not $4,000 per month as some media reports have claimed."

Khor's statistics tally with what a SEHC hawker previously told Channel NewsAsia (CNA), that he pays about S$2000 for rental. However, in total, he ends up paying close to S$4,000 per month after taking into account charges for add-ons. 

For SEHCs, such add-ons previously highlighted by the media include cashless payment systems, spot check services, concept and marketing fees, and coin-changing services.

Khor also let on that under the NEA tender terms for SEHCs, operators need to plough back at least 50 per cent of operating surplus for social benefits of the hawker centres.

NEA-run hawker centres do not have such services.

On the other hand, hawkers in NEA-run hawker centres that do not have central dish-washing services have to hire their own dishwashers costing up to S$1,500 monthly. SEHCs have central dish-washing services.

Khor said that the higher rental cost at SEHC hawker centres must take into account larger stall size, better-designed stalls and amenities at the new centres.

"Stall sizes at SEHCs, of between 10 to 21 square metres, are much larger than existing centres, which are between 5 to 13 square metres. Additionally, the actual stall rentals at SEHCs range from $750 to $3,700 a month. This is in line with rentals of non-subsidised stalls at comparable existing centres, which range from $640 to $3,900 a month."

On operating costs like table-cleaning and Service & Conservancy charges, Khor mentioned that those at SEHCs are comparable to existing hawker centres.

Support for SEHC stallholders

In her speech, Khor mentioned some things that NEA has done to help SEHC hawkers:

1. Removed reserve rent and disallowed subletting at existing hawker centres
2. Favour tenderers who offer lower rental and operating costs for new SEHC hawker centres
3. Prohibited increases in rentals and operating costs for the duration of SEHC hawker tenancy.
4. Co-pay centralised dishwashing costs for new SEHC hawkers from 2019.

In particular, Khor called for Singaporeans to do their part by clearing their trays to increase productivity and lower cleaning costs for hawkers:

"A high tray return rate will directly benefit both patrons and hawkers as it will lead to a faster turnover of tables, keep the birds away and lead to a cleaner environment that helps attract patrons. It will also ease the workload of cleaners so that the cleaning companies do not have to keep increasing the number of cleaners, which will eventually lead to higher cleaning costs for the hawkers."

Khor also implored Singaporeans to give the SEHC model more time as NEA refines the operating model to better serve Singaporeans:

"As with any trial, it is difficult to get the Socially-conscious Enterprise Hawker Centre model right from the start, especially since we have not built new hawker centres for almost 30 years. So we set some key parameters, let the market work; and when we get feedback, or issues are raised, we will move to address them swiftly and decisively, as we have done in the past month or so."

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