To help stallholders at the seven new social enterprise hawker centres get by better, the National Environment Agency (NEA) will help by paying for dishwashing services from 2019.

From Jan. 1, 2019, the authorities will co-fund half of the costs for centralised dishwashing at seven new hawker centres:

Pasir Ris Central Hawker Centre,

Kampung Admiralty Hawker Centre,

Bukit Panjang Hawker Centre,

Ci Yuan Hawker Centre,

Yishun Park Hawker Centre,

Jurong West Hawker Centre, and

Our Tampines Hub Hawker Centre

Full payment from third year

Under this co-payment system, stallholders will pay 50 percent of the costs for the first year, and 70 percent of the costs for the second year.

They will pay the full costs from the third year.

This will be carried out under an extension of the NEA’s Productive Hawker Centres grant.

Current arrangements

The grant is already currently available to stallholders at existing hawker centres that have taken up centralised dishwashing services.

Three existing hawker centres have so far adopted centralised dishwashing services and automated tray return systems.

NEA co-funds dishwashing costs for the first two years at these hawker centres as well.

The dishwashing role at most of the 114 hawker centres island-wide are contracted out dishwashing services, done by stallholders themselves or with the help of hired assistants.

NEA said in a news release that centralised dishwashing services enhance the cleanliness of the hawker centre and rate of table turnover.

A total of 13 out of 114 hawker centres across Singapore are managed by five social enterprise entities.

Seven of the 13 centres are new.

They have been built after the government announced in 2011 that it would restart the hawker centre building programme.

NEA addressing hawkers' concerns

NEA announced several moves to address hawkers’ concerns over terms in their tenancy contracts.

This co-payment of dishwashing services came a week after the announcement.

A week before this, NEA revealed that stallholders at the seven hawker centres will have greater flexibility in choosing how long they wish to open their stalls from 2019.

They will also no longer have to worry about unreasonable termination clauses.

The authorities embarked on a review of the social enterprise model for running hawker centres a month ago following criticisms and scrutiny, as well as complaints from hawkers about unreasonable contractual terms and high miscellaneous costs.