If Singapore’s ‘Unesco’ food hawkers are so good, why pay them so little?
- The Lion City talks a good game with its hawker food stalls, pushing for their recognition as cultural heritage, but it doesn’t put money where its mouth is
- By paying less for street food than Hongkongers, Singaporeans are starving the industry of new talent
At 61, Wang Ah Eng has been selling drinks to Singaporeans at Amoy Street Food Centre for 35 years. She started by helping her father and took over the stall allocated to him at Amoy when he died in 2000.
Her drinks stall, where coffee sells for roughly S$1 (US$0.72) and the last price rise was in 2015, supported her three children and sent two of them to university. But with the long hours and low earnings, none of them will take over the stall when Wang retires despite its subsidised rent.
“It’s a pity, but it’s only the course of nature,” said Wang. “The hours are too long, there are no employment benefits because we’re independent operators, and people can make a higher salary in their office jobs.”
In a bid to keep the trade alive, the government has handed management of seven new hawker centres over to private enterprises so they can inject the sector with fresh ideas.
But some of these ideas – having hawkers work a minimum number of hours, charging fees for centralised dishwashing, and making consumers put down deposits for trays so they return them – have come under heavy criticism for exploiting hawkers.