Makansutra: Minister Vivian is talking nonsense

http://statestimesreview.com/2015/08/19/makansutra-minister-vivian-is-talking-nonsense/[h=1]Makansutra: Minister Vivian is talking nonsense[/h]admin / 39 mins ago August 19, 2015





I wish his scholarly minders in his MEWR would get their ground facts accurately. This is wrong on so many fronts. Firstly, “ingredients from abt 60% of hawkers cost”, leh yao mo kao chor ah! If your food cost is 60%, eh, you long long close shop liao la. If you cannot do below 30%, go be a highly paid civil servant better la. Also, the “progresseive wages for hawker assistants”.. allo, they are already paid way more than your govt mandated $7+ an hour. No takers. Linda Heng is already offering $100 a day for assistant and take up is sluggish and reluctant. The problem is manpower availability, not just about overpaying them. Mana ada orang kereja !
Photo from Facebook

And please, do not make turn the hawkers into minions out to do community and political favours, they really need to make money too. No wrong there at all. Getting them to feed the poor with low priced meals is ok, many i know will happitly give out free and even big disocunted cost+ meal to the displaced, but offering it cheap across the board to all and sundry, will invariably attract the rich and kiamsiap who will invariably bitch about quality and comfort. Let market rates dictate what they will do, it’s a Sg meritocracy thingie.
Sure, there is a big chunk of hawkers paying under $400 for rents, but these are hawkers from the President Devan Nair days still managing the old rental structure. The new stalls in decent places are all hovering at 4 figure rents. (they pay up to $3k at Maxwell). And lets see how these indie operators can “help bring the cost of food down” and make the place viable and relevant.
I am very sad to see the marginalisation of our beloved food culture struggling to grow in our food centres. Makansutra
Kf Seetoh
Makansutra
You may view his original post here.


[h=3]Comments[/h]

Well said Seetoh my old SJI bro....

I have new found respect for Mr Makansutra!!

A person depressed will soon be warded at IMH. VB is on the way.

VB is famous for making generic statements when it suits him.
In his commemorative book on the YOG, this clown was able to
list down the EXACT number down to the last digit on the number
of lunch packets served during the games!

What to do?? They don't take bus or MRT or eat at hawker centre. Their pay so high they don't understand or begin to understand the concerns of the common man.

Slamming alcohol ban here

https://m.facebook.com/kfseetoh/posts/10153486836192052?pnref=story

GramStroker said:

Slamming alcohol ban here

https://m.facebook.com/kfseetoh/posts/10153486836192052?pnref=story

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Remember, the seeds of the alcohol ban were planted immediately after the Little India riot. On the morning after the riot, Lui Tuck Yew went to ground zero to give an interview the reporters. He blamed alcohol for the riot.


[video=youtube;lZ6t1cPhW3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ6t1cPhW3s[/video]

VB is rubbish and talks rubbish. That is why he is at ENV.

GoldenDragon said:

VB is rubbish and talks rubbish. That is why he is at ENV.

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Because he is SHIT?

GoldenDragon said:

VB is rubbish and talks rubbish. That is why he is at ENV.

Click to expand...

I always thought ENV reserved for "giao-tor" race ministers

Difference between a cantonese and a Hokkein.

Narong Wongwan said:

Well said Seetoh my old SJI bro....

Click to expand...

The_Hypocrite said:

Difference between a cantonese and a Hokkein.

Click to expand...

Seetoh not exactly a 廣府人，他是四邑人。his dialect is a dying breed in spore.

glockman said:

I have new found respect for Mr Makansutra!!

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It's good for a well known public figure like Seetoh to come out and rebut the PAP idiots. Seetoh truly knows the in and out of the food business and what he said are the real facts. On the other hand, Ms Vivian based his comments on the statistics provided by his NEA staff who will obviously skew to what the PAP likes to hear.

Hope more like Seetoh in their respective expertise will step out to refute whatever the PAP spews to mislead the people.

Minister Vivian blew the budget for YOG. He is not known to be good at numbers and figures.

Hawker's cost is more like the following

Food - 40%
Labor - 20%
Overhead ( rental , depreciation, utilities, cleaning, insurance ) - 35%
Margin - 5%

actually what vivian the black dog say is true,if the cost of food is 60%,that means most of the money we pay to the hawker goes to the ingredients and the quality of the food,however if the cost of the food is less than 30% of the expenses,that means most of our money goes to bullshit like labour rental utilities cleaning and whatnot....in the worst case scenario,like georgie's toast box breadtalk,less than 50 cents goes to the soya milk,another 50 cents goes to the packaging and cheap labour,the other 2 dollars goes into georgie's pockets.

in that case better to stay at home and cook better.

He blew the enormous budget by an enormous amount. :p

Wunderfool said:

Minister Vivian blew the budget for YOG. He is not known to be good at numbers and figures.

Hawker's cost is more like the following

Food - 40%
Labor - 20%
Overhead ( rental , depreciation, utilities, cleaning, insurance ) - 35%
Margin - 5%

Click to expand...

He is an example of a surgeon (assuming he was a reasonably good eye surgeon) becoming a fucking lousy minister. One must know one's strength and weakness (no one else could accurately tell you). If you can't be honest with yourself, how can you be honest with others?

https://www.facebook.com/Vivian.Balakrishnan.Sg?fref=ts

Aaron Loy

Bukit Panjang Hawker Centre & Market:
$320 – Service & Conservancy Charge
$500 – Table Cleaning Fee
$850 – Dishwashing Fee
Total of $1670, or more accurately, $1786.90, with GST.
Subject to change, but will it go down?

Not expecting it to be free, but why are the fees so high? The amount is probably more than the pay of a worker with additional employee CPF contribution. Is NTUC hiring an individual cleaner for each stall?
Do private coffeeshops, if they have outsourced centralised cleaning, charge $1444.50 (not inclusive of S&CC) per stall for the service? Would probably expect it to be about $500+-/month. Those with actual experience, do comment of course.
This is on top of the agreed upon rent of course. So, if the rent is $1, they'll still need to pay $1786.90 + $1 = $1787.90.
I've got quotes for Jurong East and Pandan Valley coffeshop stall rentals for $1000-$1800, one even includes utilities. To be fair, they're not at a centralised hub like where the BPHC&M is, but those numbers does put the 'effective rent', which is rent + fees, into some perspective. Perhaps a better comparison would be the rental values for the 2 competing coffeeshops right beside BPHC&M. Any concrete numbers would be nice.


Vivian Balakrishnan

Thanks Aaron. Manpower costs have certainly gone up, partly because we introduce Progressive Wages for ckeaners. Cleaners must be paid at least $1,000 or more. Hawker assistants will also be paid more. I think that is fair. Hawkers and the managers of hawker centres must therefore try to achieve economies of scale and improve productivity. I expect NTUC to reduce these rates wherever possible, and to return any surplus back to the hawkers or use it to improve the centre. I also want rentals to come down as much as possible - and that has been the reason for the policy changes. I also agree that we should try to provide as much data about the costs of operation as possible. The bottom line is that we are trying to achieve a balance between all the different stakeholders whilst keeping prices affordable. Will be open to calibrating the policies further to achieve this difficult balance. Thanks for sharing your ideas.


Aaron Loy

Transparency on the side of NTUC would help of course, especially since this is supposed to be operated as a non-profit. Expecting them to do something is always different from them actually executing that something.
For example, my assumption is that they're not going to hire 1 worker for each stall, which is part of the reason why it makes the charge illogically high. But then if they are, they ought to let people know. Or if they're offsetting some of the costs of having people run that place through those fees (shouldn't that be S&CC though)? Or are they accumulating a surplus at the beginning for the proverbial rainy day? If so, up to how much? etc.

This government has lost the trust of its people - through its own merits. All your colleagues inability to communicate properly only exacerbates the situation. Naturally, a government controlled union (talk about conflicting interests, lol) would also be implicated in the mistrust.

It's time to gain back their trust.


Vivian Balakrishnan
With due respect, I don't think the government has lost the trust of our people. Nevertheless, you know that I am a believer in giving as much data as possible so that people with different ideas can participate in generating solutions. I do hope you know me well enough by now.


Aaron Loy

Then with all due respect - the irony in your belief is that that's the reason why the govt's support is in steady decline. I guess the confidence might be naively reassuring to some, but please, wake up. Ignorance may be bliss, but in this case, ignorance means slowly, steadily, handing over the control of Singapore to buffoons.

Then you have to honestly ask yourself where does this confidence come from. Remember the emperor's new clothes. I'm respectfully telling you that you're naked right now.

I guess the B- score of the govt now is not an F, but it surely is worst than the A of the govt in the past. You want to wait until the F score comes before realising "oh dear.. We did lose it".

At least you're not going what your colleagues are doing, which is blaming the examiner for the lower score. Or I hope so. (Social media, etc, are force multipliers, not cause.)

As for giving the numbers, simply highlighting the fact that many pay low rent isn't enough. Not mentioning the fees doesn't provide the whole picture. "Hey some may pay rents as low as $10!" On top of the $1777.90 (w/GST) lah, right.

Not a good way to get trust.

Re: knowing you. I do. Or I try to at least lol. That's why I'm grateful that we can come here and have candid conversations. Your sincerity and humbleness helps too. Many of your colleagues have that as a mask, thankfully that's not the case for you.


Gabriel Khoo
No more reply.. Full stop here? Very interesting conversation.


Aaron Loy
He's a busy man. They need to remember they're naked, but we also shouldn't be too quick to judge.


Wilfred NG
Dear Minister Vivian,
If data provided by Aaron Loy is correct, I am pretty sure NTUC or operators of the hawker centre is over charging.

My question is what is the profit margin NTUC or other operators will need to make to be of decent amount?
In a hawker centre, how many table cleaners, dishwashers, general cleaners, equipments cost, etc.. are needed? You plus up all these costing and divided it with the number of stalls in a hawker centre, you will fully understand why I said it is grossly over charging.


Linda Teo
Feeling blessed that we have Minister who really care for our people. The cleaning jobs are really tough issues as one can't expect local people to do the tasks at low wages(even higer wages little attract any one) and the nation can't load in cheap foreign labour which will have other issues like space for accommodation and their cultural issues. The whole nation should brainstorm for ourselves. The clearing away the dishes that we had eat is a good existing on going idea. Maybe wet wipes should be available for us to clean up ourselves for the next user. Maybe dish wash machines can help in the future. Let's work together and be united. Cheers!