Koufu quit Jurong West Hawker Centre. stall holders left hanging.

[Hypocrite-The]

Sinkies have a very poor memory, so they need to be constantly reminded.

https://www.mewr.gov.sg/docs/defaul...ry/pressrelease/pcp-recommendation-report.pdf

https://www.facebook.com/myhawkerce...eting-community-needssingapo/238351769590706/

Remember this?

KF Seetoh writes open letter to Senior Minister of State about how landlords killing hawkers with fees
This is no way to preserve hawker culture.


Hawker food champion, real culture advocate and consultant KF Seetoh of Makansutra has penned a heartfelt open letter on Oct. 9 addressed to the Senior Minister of State Amy Khor.

Written on behalf of Singapore's hawkers, the open letter is titled, "Please Preserve our Public Hawker Centres".

Not-for-profit enterprise expensive for hawkers
The main gripe is against the trend of Social Enterprise Hawker Centres sprouting up all over the island as of late, which have been touted as so-called "not-for-profit social enterprises" -- but are increasingly seen as anything but not-for-profit.

To date, there are 13 hawker centres and markets run by social enterprises, including Fei Siong, NTUC Foodfare, Timbre, Koufu, and Kopitiam.

And they have been getting massive bad press, as hawkers operating in these entities have been squeezed financially left, right and centre -- and are voicing out.

What this open letter shows
In this latest open letter, Seetoh got hold of the actual contractual terms and conditions in black and white that hawkers operating in not-for-profit social enterprises have to put up with, which consists of plenty of miscellaneous fees and hidden operating costs.

What are private social enterprise hawker centres?
Hawker centres run by private social enterprises are meant to theoretically marry the best of both worlds.

They keep food affordable and available for the masses with constant fresh injections of culinary ideas, while operating according to free market competition rules with little government oversight, as well as discharging social obligations by catering to the less well-off.

In other words, good old fashioned hawker centres that were the purview of the governmental National Environment Agency (NEA) are slowly being transferred into the hands of private entities, and in the process, costs of operating a hawker stall have been escalating.

The point Seetoh tried to make is that Social Enterprise Hawker Centres have rentals and fees comparable to other private food courts and halls in Singapore, but they are nowhere as cheap when compared to the other established NEA-run public hawker centres and coffee shops.

Here are some of the costs incurred by hawkers in not-for-profit hawker centres as highlighted by Seetoh:

1. Penalty for giving up stall
One of the gripes of hawkers who have quit or are quitting as tenant of a Social Enterprise Hawker Centre is the termination costs penalty.


This detail in the contract states that the tenant has to pay S$2,000 a month for early termination until the contract period expires.

Seetoh also elaborated that S$2,000 is just the basic rental incurred by the hawker when operating in the social enterprise hawker centre.

When additional charges and miscellaneous fees are included, the hawker effectively pays close to S$4,000 a month in rental and fees.

In other words, there are two choices: Hawkers pay S$2,000 a month for quitting early until the contract duration runs out, or carry on paying S$4,000 a month to operate until the contract ends.

2. Hawkers foot the cost of S$0.20 for each tray customer returns
The cost of encouraging civic-mindedness in customers is ultimately borne by the hawkers.


The hawker has to pay 20 cents out of his or her own pocket when the customer returns a tray due to the cashback system implemented.

The hawker can pay between S$400 and S$800 a month just for tray returns alone.

3. Landlord can raise fees at any time and give short notice
This spaghetti alphabet soup of lawyerly words just means the landlord can increase payments at anytime because they are legally entitled to as the contract is binding.


This puts hawkers at a severe disadvantage as there is little they can do to project revenues, profits and losses, especially when costs becomes a moving target they have to hit every month and it can potentially escalate at any time.

This is bearing in mind that not all hawkers can read and understand these jargon-laden terms and conditions without getting help by hiring a lawyer to read the terms and conditions for them.

4. Hawkers have to pay for the tenancy agreement
Adding insult to injury, the hawkers are asked to pay S$267.50 for the preparation of the tenancy agreement consisting of spaghetti alphabet soup of lawyerly words.


[related_story]

Solution
Seetoh's call to action is simple: He is asking the Senior Minister of State to reconsider the current arrangement, and taking the hawker centres out of private hands and putting them back into the hands of NEA, like how it always had been.

Seetoh wrote that there are almost 30,000 hawker street food licenses in Singapore and 6,000 are sited in public-owned hawker centres.

The other 24,000 hawker licenses attached to stalls operating in privately-owned enterprises should take their cue from how these minority 6,000 stalls are run by the NEA, like they always had.

Currently, NEA still uses a tender bidding system to determine rental rates, while on the other hand, social enterprise operators are free to set their own rental rates.

Although not specifically spelt out by Seetoh as this issue is still in its early days, he is sounding a warning of ultimately avoiding a diluted form of "regulatory capture".

Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency ends up advancing the commercial interest of a group at the expense of the public interest -- even though the regulatory agency was initially created to act on behalf of the public.

But a more understandable and salient issue to grab the public's attention is the threat this new arrangement of Social Enterprise Hawker Centres is posing to Singapore's hawker culture, which is one of the rare vestiges of organic national culture that is left standing in the 21st century that is worth preserving.

The threat is real. And it has been called out.

You can read the open letter here.

Update:
All photos via Makansutra except top photo


If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram to get the latest updates.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Just like those who had oppie connections won contracts with the aljunied town council.

Yes..just like a multi million town council software owned by a 2 buck company owned by ex pap MPs.

AHTC Trial: WP was stripped of its town council management computer system by $2 AIM - The Online Citizen
Correspondent
At the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) trial yesterday (8 Oct), the defence acting on behalf of WP MPs Sylvia Lim, Low Thia Khiang and Pritam Singh, along with other AHTC councillors, said that the audit reports which the lawsuits were based on, fail to recognise the dire circumstances WP MPs and councillors were put into.

At the time when WP took over the running of Aljunied town council after 2011 GE, it was “stripped of its town council management computer system (TCMS)”, the defence said.

WP had to do their best to upscale their Hougang computer management system to handle the whole of Aljunied GRC.

The defence lawyer also pointed to the fact that the so-called IT firm Action Information Management Pte Ltd (AIM) had terminated its contract with Aljunied town council after WP took over, and refused to let WP continue to use the TCMS software.


WP was forced to scramble to upscale their Hougang computer management system in order to handle the much larger Aljunied GRC.

“Despite this, AHTC was subjected to continuing audit from 2012 to 2016,” said the defence lawyer. “During the early part of this period, AHTC was still in the process of upscaling the computer system. And yet, no one, not even KPMG or PwC, mentions this withdrawal of this vital TCMS and its effects (in their audit reports).”

“It is (my clients’) case that in all these audit reports the plaintiffs have failed to recognise the predicament that AHTC was in,” he added.

It is very unusual that both lawsuits are “based on audit reports and not facts”, the lawyer said. His clients “intend to challenge the accuracy and the correctness of these audit reports”.

TCMS software sold off to $2 company owned by PAP before 2011 GE

In June 2010, slightly less than a year from 2011 GE, the PAP called an “open tender” to sell away the software. AIM, a $2 company owned by PAP, submitted the sole bid and won the rights to buy over the software for $140,000. It was considered a bargain since PAP town councils probably paid millions to NCS to develop it. The software was finally transferred to AIM in Jan 2011, 4 months before 2011 GE.

After AIM bought over the software, it leased the software back to PAP town councils for $785 a month. AIM also engaged back NCS to maintain and further develop the system.

What was more incredible was AIM only had two part-time staff. Its three directors were all former PAP MPs: Mr S. Chandra Das, Mr Chew Heng Ching and Mr Lau Ping Sum.

At the time after AIM terminated its contract with WP-run Aljunied town council in Aug 2011, WP Chairman Sylvia Lim was visibly angry.

“What justification was there for the Town Councils to relinquish ownership (of the systems) and leave the continuity of the Town Council operations at the mercy of a third party (AIM)? Residents all over Singapore have a right to know,” she said in a public statement.

Noting that PAP MP Teo Ho Pin had admitted that AIM was “fully-owned” by the PAP, she pointed out further that the PAP-managed town councils “had seen it fit to sell away their ownership of the systems, developed with public funds, to a political party, which presumably could act in its own interests when exercising its rights to terminate the contracts”.

Later Mr Teo came out in public to defend PAP’s action saying that the software agreement which allowed AIM to terminate its deal with just a month’s notice was deemed “reasonable”.

He explained the reason for PAP town councils selling and leasing the software back from AIM, which was allowed to terminate the contract with any town council that experiences a “material change in composition”.

“This (the clause) is reasonable as the contractor has agreed to provide services on the basis of the existing (town council) and town boundaries, and priced this assumption into the tender,” he said. “Should this change materially, the contractor could end up providing services to a town council which comprises a much larger area and more residents, but at the same price.”

He also explained that the sale took place because it was “cumbersome and inefficient” to have 14 individual town councils hold intellectual property rights to the software being used by all of them. He further added that the move to sell resulted in savings of about $8,000 for the town councils.

Share this:

 

[nayr69sg]

Remember this?

KF Seetoh writes open letter to Senior Minister of State about how landlords killing hawkers with fees
This is no way to preserve hawker culture.


Hawker food champion, real culture advocate and consultant KF Seetoh of Makansutra has penned a heartfelt open letter on Oct. 9 addressed to the Senior Minister of State Amy Khor.

Written on behalf of Singapore's hawkers, the open letter is titled, "Please Preserve our Public Hawker Centres".

Not-for-profit enterprise expensive for hawkers
The main gripe is against the trend of Social Enterprise Hawker Centres sprouting up all over the island as of late, which have been touted as so-called "not-for-profit social enterprises" -- but are increasingly seen as anything but not-for-profit.

To date, there are 13 hawker centres and markets run by social enterprises, including Fei Siong, NTUC Foodfare, Timbre, Koufu, and Kopitiam.

And they have been getting massive bad press, as hawkers operating in these entities have been squeezed financially left, right and centre -- and are voicing out.

What this open letter shows
In this latest open letter, Seetoh got hold of the actual contractual terms and conditions in black and white that hawkers operating in not-for-profit social enterprises have to put up with, which consists of plenty of miscellaneous fees and hidden operating costs.

What are private social enterprise hawker centres?
Hawker centres run by private social enterprises are meant to theoretically marry the best of both worlds.

They keep food affordable and available for the masses with constant fresh injections of culinary ideas, while operating according to free market competition rules with little government oversight, as well as discharging social obligations by catering to the less well-off.

In other words, good old fashioned hawker centres that were the purview of the governmental National Environment Agency (NEA) are slowly being transferred into the hands of private entities, and in the process, costs of operating a hawker stall have been escalating.

The point Seetoh tried to make is that Social Enterprise Hawker Centres have rentals and fees comparable to other private food courts and halls in Singapore, but they are nowhere as cheap when compared to the other established NEA-run public hawker centres and coffee shops.

Here are some of the costs incurred by hawkers in not-for-profit hawker centres as highlighted by Seetoh:

1. Penalty for giving up stall
One of the gripes of hawkers who have quit or are quitting as tenant of a Social Enterprise Hawker Centre is the termination costs penalty.


This detail in the contract states that the tenant has to pay S$2,000 a month for early termination until the contract period expires.

Seetoh also elaborated that S$2,000 is just the basic rental incurred by the hawker when operating in the social enterprise hawker centre.

When additional charges and miscellaneous fees are included, the hawker effectively pays close to S$4,000 a month in rental and fees.

In other words, there are two choices: Hawkers pay S$2,000 a month for quitting early until the contract duration runs out, or carry on paying S$4,000 a month to operate until the contract ends.

2. Hawkers foot the cost of S$0.20 for each tray customer returns
The cost of encouraging civic-mindedness in customers is ultimately borne by the hawkers.


The hawker has to pay 20 cents out of his or her own pocket when the customer returns a tray due to the cashback system implemented.

The hawker can pay between S$400 and S$800 a month just for tray returns alone.

3. Landlord can raise fees at any time and give short notice
This spaghetti alphabet soup of lawyerly words just means the landlord can increase payments at anytime because they are legally entitled to as the contract is binding.


This puts hawkers at a severe disadvantage as there is little they can do to project revenues, profits and losses, especially when costs becomes a moving target they have to hit every month and it can potentially escalate at any time.

This is bearing in mind that not all hawkers can read and understand these jargon-laden terms and conditions without getting help by hiring a lawyer to read the terms and conditions for them.

4. Hawkers have to pay for the tenancy agreement
Adding insult to injury, the hawkers are asked to pay S$267.50 for the preparation of the tenancy agreement consisting of spaghetti alphabet soup of lawyerly words.


[related_story]

Solution
Seetoh's call to action is simple: He is asking the Senior Minister of State to reconsider the current arrangement, and taking the hawker centres out of private hands and putting them back into the hands of NEA, like how it always had been.

Seetoh wrote that there are almost 30,000 hawker street food licenses in Singapore and 6,000 are sited in public-owned hawker centres.

The other 24,000 hawker licenses attached to stalls operating in privately-owned enterprises should take their cue from how these minority 6,000 stalls are run by the NEA, like they always had.

Currently, NEA still uses a tender bidding system to determine rental rates, while on the other hand, social enterprise operators are free to set their own rental rates.

Although not specifically spelt out by Seetoh as this issue is still in its early days, he is sounding a warning of ultimately avoiding a diluted form of "regulatory capture".

Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency ends up advancing the commercial interest of a group at the expense of the public interest -- even though the regulatory agency was initially created to act on behalf of the public.

But a more understandable and salient issue to grab the public's attention is the threat this new arrangement of Social Enterprise Hawker Centres is posing to Singapore's hawker culture, which is one of the rare vestiges of organic national culture that is left standing in the 21st century that is worth preserving.

The threat is real. And it has been called out.

You can read the open letter here.

Update:
All photos via Makansutra except top photo


If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram to get the latest updates.

Not so much sinkies have poor memory.

It is that they only care about THEMSELVES.

So they don't give a shit about the business owners or the hawkers or stall owners.

All they want is delicious sedap good food AT ROCK BOTTOM PRICES.

This is why you often see complaints and posts about how EXPENSIVE the food is.

Ai chee ai pee society.

No point doing business in Singapore.

 

[knowwhatyouwantinlife]

Just support the pure hawkers lor and boycott the food courts and coffee shops, all rent seeking ma...the young ones will say cannot live without bubble tea the old ones will say cannot live without lua kopi and beer ladies...

 

[JohnTan]

Yes..just like a multi million town council software owned by a 2 buck company owned by ex pap MPs.

This matter was already debated and resolved in parliament years ago. If you not happy, report AIMS to CPIB.

 

[Scrooball (clone)]

Better investigate who is benefiting from all these social enterprise nonsense.

Not for profit on paper but rental and penalties are high? Then what the fuck?! Koufu already spit on this concept by saying they are answerable to shareholders. If that’s the case, how can shifting to private sector management be not for profit? It’s the exact opposite.

 

[laksaboy]

Better investigate who is benefiting from all these social enterprise nonsense.

Not for profit on paper but rental and penalties are high? Then what the fuck?! Koufu already spit on this concept by saying they are answerable to shareholders. If that’s the case, how can shifting to private sector management be not for profit? It’s the exact opposite.

One of the initiators, as mentioned in my earlier comment:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singap...77th-street-founder-elim-chew-forges-new-path

https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/hawker-fare-is-the-best

Always be suspicious when 158th features one of the cronies in an ingratiating article.

 

[frogcall]

This is just one tip of the iceberg, i bet many more social enterprise run hawker centres will suffer the same fate or worse.

Social enterprise my ass

 

[laksaboy]

The chio bu (for Sinkie standard) selling satay bee hoon is working at a 'social enterprise' hawker centre.

https://ciyuanhawker.com.sg
https://ciyuanhawker.com.sg/index.php/about-us

Ci Yuan Hawker Centre is a showcase of the new alternative management model of hawker centre managed by Fei Siong Group.

Ci Yuan Hawker Centre is the very first of 20 new hawker centres which the Singapore Government has pledged to build. Ci Yuan Hawker Centre’s managing agent, Fei Siong Social Enterprise, is a social enterprise subsidiary of the Fei Siong Group. There are 40 cooked food stalls and the hawker centre has a seating capacity of about 640.

Under the new alternative management model of hawker centre, Ci Yuan Hawker Centre will be managed on a “not-for-profit” basis. Fei Siong Social Enterprise has injected new ideas and brought in their wealth of expertise in food and beverage operations so as to diversify food options and thereby enhancing the consumer’s dining experience at Ci Yuan Hawker Centre.

There she is, in a group photo op with Loong and Eunuch Yeo standing behind her.

 

[Confuseous]

Elin Chew could not even save her own business, let alone running social enterprise ones.

 

[Leckmichamarsch]

driving prices up with middle layers

 

[rotiprata]

There she is, in a group photo op with Loong and Eunuch Yeo standing behind her.

I can only spot tarpow john ....

 

[KuanTi01]

Woops, so much for your 'running hawker centres as a social enterprise' scam!

P.S: Fuck you Elim Chew, you bulldyke-looking crony.

It is a public relations scam alright! Another good-riddance social project. Just mandate lower rentals and let the savings be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.

 

[congo9]

Better investigate who is benefiting from all these social enterprise nonsense.

Not for profit on paper but rental and penalties are high? Then what the fuck?! Koufu already spit on this concept by saying they are answerable to shareholders. If that’s the case, how can shifting to private sector management be not for profit? It’s the exact opposite.

They already tell the whole world that these social enterprises idea is a raw idea for most parties except the government. Government wash their hands off these hawker claiming that they have great social enterprise idea to take care of the hawker centre.

But it is just outsourcing of management to Pte vendors in a better worded way.

Koufu has thrown in the towel. Let's see how these moronic and lazy scholar deal with this loose idea.