SINGAPORE — Stallholders at seven new social enterprise-run hawker centres will get some help in paying for dishwashing services from next year, the National Environment Agency (NEA) announced on Friday (Nov 16) in a move to mitigate hawkers’ operating costs.
From Jan 1, the authorities will co-fund the costs for centralised dishwashing at seven new hawker centres. They are: 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.
Stallholders there will pay 50 per cent of the costs for the first year, and 70 per cent of the costs for the second year, under an extension of the NEA’s Productive Hawker Centres grant. They will pay the full costs from the third year onwards.
Currently, the grant is available only to stallholders at existing hawker centres who have taken up centralised dishwashing services. To date, three existing hawker centres have adopted centralised dishwashing services and automated tray return systems, and NEA similarly co-funds dishwashing costs for the first two years.
Stallholders at most of the 114 hawker centres island-wide either contract out dishwashing services, hire an assistant to wash dishes, or do it themselves.
“Besides manpower savings, these (centralised dishwashing) services enhance the cleanliness of the hawker centre and rate of table turnover, which benefits both hawkers and patrons,” said the NEA in a news release.
“Stallholders can then focus on their cooking as they need not worry about hiring assistants to wash their crockeries, and can also save on their utility bills.”
This comes a week after the NEA announced several moves to address hawkers’ concerns over terms in their tenancy contracts. Last Friday, it revealed that stallholders at the seven hawker centres will have greater flexibility when it comes to how long they wish to open their stalls from next year, and they will no longer have to worry about unreasonable termination clauses.
About a month ago, the authorities embarked on a review of the social enterprise model for running hawker centres. It has come under fire and increasing scrutiny in recent months, following complaints from hawkers about unreasonable contractual terms.
Observers and some hawkers operating in these centres had also raised concerns over high ancillary costs, such as for dishwashing and table-cleaning services.
Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor told TODAY that the recent move would help stallholders at new hawker centres get used to the centralised dishwashing system as they build up their customer base, and as the new centres find their footing.
“The benefits of centralised dishwashing may not be so apparent to them (during that initial period) because they’re still building up footfall, and therefore we think they need some support in transition. This would help them in reducing operating costs for the stall,” she added.
In Singapore, 13 out of 114 hawker centres across the island are managed by five social enterprise entities. Seven of the 13 centres are new, built after the Government announced in 2011 that it would restart the hawker centre building programme.
The NEA also said the rental and transactional costs for e-payment terminals will be waived for stallholders who choose to allow customers to pay for their food and drinks via these cashless payment methods.
Stallholders, including those at the seven new hawker centres, who sign up for this between December this year and August 2020 will benefit from this.
In September, government agency Enterprise Singapore announced that electronic payment service provider Nets had been appointed to handle e-payment transactions across multiple payment schemes at some coffee shops, hawker centres, and industrial canteens.
By August 2020, some 200 coffee shops, 25 hawker centres and 20 industrial canteens run by the NEA, Housing and Development Board, and JTC Corporation will be able to offer customers up to 20 e-payment methods. These include credit cards, ez-link, Nets FlashPay and GrabPay.
The various e-payment modes will be rolled out progressively in two phases, with the first batch of 10 e-payment schemes going “live” by the end of the year.
https://www.todayonline.com/singapo...ntres-pay-only-50-cent-dishwashing-costs-help
