Application and Price Trends for NEA Hawker Stalls

Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) what is the current number of vacant hawker stalls managed by NEA; (b) what are the latest average, lowest and highest successful tender prices for NEA hawker stalls in the last three years; and (c) whether NEA can consider allocating hawker stalls based on the prevailing rental rate in a particular hawker centre/market managed by NEA to families receiving financial assistance and retrenched persons who are prepared to run their own business.

As of 1 May 2017, there were over 6,000 cooked food stalls in the hawker centres owned by the Government. About 97% of them were occupied. This is the consistent average occupancy rate for the past five years.

The average successful tender bid for our cooked food stalls over the last three years is $1,370 per month. The lowest bid was $1 while the highest bid was $4,888. This excludes a recent exceptional case where there was a successful bid of $10,000 for a stall at the People's Park hawker centre, but the bidder terminated the tenancy even before he started operations.

At my Ministry's Committee of Supply debate last year, I shared with the Member Mr Gan Thiam Poh the background of our termination in 1990 of our previous policy of allocating available vacant hawker stalls to those in financial hardship. I explained at the time that the take-up rate had consistently been very low and, moreover, most of the applicants had rejected our offered stalls and preferred to wait for a vacancy in the more popular hawker centres.

There are, therefore, no grounds to reinstate this policy nor allocate hawker stalls at market rents to only those who are retrenched or require financial assistance. Like any other self-employed person, a hawker can sustain his business successfully if he is disciplined and has the required skills and not simply because he is in need of a job. Those who are genuinely interested in the hawker trade are welcome to bid for any of the vacant stalls which NEA puts out for tender every month. Those who are in need of financial and other types of assistance, including employment assistance, may wish to seek the assistance of MSF or Workforce Singapore respectively.

I thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. I hear you, but would the Ministry consider working with any specific organisation to provide training or even look at how to assist those who are retrenched or are receiving financial assistance who wish to become hawkers?

Indeed, we do have programmes that we have recently implemented to help those who are interested to join the hawker trade to do so, including, of course, those who may have been retrenched and are looking to join the hawker trade, perhaps as a second pathway.

On the recommendations of the Hawker Centre 3.0 Committee, we have launched a Hawker Fare series where aspiring hawkers can learn tips and culinary skills from veteran hawkers. We have started this series and it has been overwhelmingly subscribed.

We are also going to start a hawkerpreneur course with ITE College West where they will teach aspiring hawkers simple skills on how to run a hawker stall, pricing and so on, as well as even how to apply and bid for a hawker stall so that they will be able to bid at a realistic price, at a rent that their business can sustain.

In addition, at the end of the year, we are looking at introducing some incubator stalls at some of our hawker centres. For aspiring hawkers who qualify, there will be certain criteria that they will have to qualify and they can try out their skills and their acumen at these incubator stalls before they actually take the plunge and join the hawker trade.

I think that some of the other policies we have implemented in recent years, for instance, removing the reserve rent as well as controlling assignment and subletting, actually also help to lower the entry barrier for aspiring hawkers so that it will discourage the tendency to bid at very unrealistic prices.