Cleaning Fee Hikes at Hawker Centres

Sir, NEA currently manages the contracts for table-top cleaning and collection of crockery at the 25 MEWR-owned hawker centres. When the previous cleaning contract expired, an open tender was called on 16 August 2011 and three bids were received. The bids were evaluated on price and quality, and the new cleaning contract was awarded in accordance with best sourcing practices.

The last contract was secured more than three years ago. Since then, the cost of providing cleaning services has increased due to, among other things, higher manpower costs. NEA's role in this contract is to consolidate the cleaning needs of the centres and to ensure compliance with cleaning standards. NEA does not levy any additional charges for managing the cleaning contract.

Hawker centres that are not managed by NEA would usually award the cleaning contracts collectively and directly to the cleaning service provider through the Hawkers Association with each stall-holder paying his share of the actual cost of cleaning.

We are mindful of the impact of the increase of cleaning charges on stall-holders. After consultations with the Hawkers Associations in the affected centres, MEWR has decided to phase in the table-cleaning charges in two steps at four-month intervals for six of the nine centres. The increases faced by the remaining three centres are of a smaller quantum – less than $200 per month – and would, therefore, be implemented in a single step. The hawker representatives have accepted our proposal to mitigate the impact of the increase on their stall-holders. I would like to emphasise that this move should not be misread as a subsidy since all the hawkers will eventually have to pay the full cleaning costs.

Mr Baey asked about the impact on cleaners' salaries. I would not be able to provide details on the extent to which the increases in fees would benefit the cleaners since this will depend on the operations of each cleaning service provider. However, under the prevalent Government procurement process, NEA prescribes the terms and conditions for best sourcing and ensures that there was transparency and competition in the tender process for effective procurement.

The tender stipulates that the contract will only be awarded to cleaning companies accredited under the Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme which requires cleaners to be provided basic statutory benefits stated under the Employment Act, including CPF contribution, paid public holidays, and so on. With effect from 1 April 2013, the Government will require all tenderers of new Government cleaning contracts to be accredited under the Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme which has since been enhanced on 1 November 2012 to incorporate the recommendation of the Tripartite Committee on Cleaners on progressive wages, among other enhanced criteria. These changes signal that the Government is taking the lead in improving the employment conditions, training and development provision and career progression of the cleaning industry.

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The most sustainable solution to the moderation of cleaning charges for the hawkers is for all of us – the patrons and stall-holders – to help keep our hawker centres clean. It is not possible for us to infinitely increase the number of cleaners at our centres to clean up after our mess. Thus, our tagline for our Clean and Green Singapore campaign this year: every action counts. Please help us and our hawkers to keep Singapore clean.

Sir, I thank the Second Minister for the answers. I have the following supplementary questions. The first is: I recognise that the contracts were called at different times for different hawker centres. So, my first supplementary question is whether the quantum of any increase in cleaning fees is clearly stated in the contracts. Going forward, I think that it is important to make such provisions clear from the onset. My second supplementary question is: would the cleaning fees at the other hawker centres be expected to rise, going forward? Next, with these increases, can we expect cleaning services to improve, and in what ways? Finally, with the on-going push for the Tray Return scheme – which all of us are fully supportive of – what would the impact be on the efficiency and productivity of these cleaning services at these hawker centres and whether these factors will be taken into account in any new cleaning fee increase?

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for the supplementary questions. First of all, on the first question, on whether the increase in fee is stated in the tenancy contracts, the answer is yes. There are provisions in the tenancy contracts on cleaning fees that could change from time to time. Sometimes, the stall-holders may not expect and would not be able to anticipate the movements in the pricing of the cleaning contracts, but I think they are aware that these are some of the business risks that they have to manage, just as they are managing other risks, such as cost of utilities, and so on.

As far as whether cleaning fees would increase in other centres – let me say that at this point in time, the cleaning industry is going through some changes. First of all, there is accreditation that the Government will be insisting on. Secondly, there is also some impact coming from the tighter foreign workers dependency ratio. Also, the hours of working and operations in the centres may vary from time to time and from centre to centre.

These are all factors that could have an impact on cleaning charges, and part of the effort in having an enhanced accreditation is to try to move the industry towards one that has better standards, takes better care of its workers through training, development and progressive wages, and where there are greater economies of scale, and therefore, in a better position to invest in productivity measures, such as improvements in the use of equipment, investments in mechanisation, and so on.

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The industry is actually characterised by a large number of low-skilled workers, lowly educated, sometimes not in a very good position to know their rights. Sometimes, they do not know how to look for information on training, and so on. So, it is time for the society and the Government to take a holistic view and try to improve the working conditions as well as career prospects for this group of workers. It is through the accreditation system that we hope to achieve these objectives.

Whether there will be improvements, as I said, we hope so. We hope that by putting in criteria for best sourcing that there are better standards required of the cleaners. With better training, we hope that each of the cleaners will be in a better position to do their jobs better. More importantly is also the need to mitigate the lack of workers because we know that this is not an industry where many Singaporeans would jump on the band wagon and will look for a career here. So, we recognise that we have to achieve more with fewer workers, going forward. This is where looking at processes, looking at improvements in the equipment, looking at better mechanisation will be a longer term solution towards mitigating the cost of increase, going forward.

This is the thinking behind the return of trays. At the moment, when we look at the Tray Return effort, we are looking at it from the point of view of promoting social graciousness, a responsibility amongst Singaporeans to pick up after ourselves and not to leave work behind for others. This is also a more sustainable way for all of us to work towards reducing our reliance on workers, particularly foreign workers. We will have to monitor the progress of Tray Return scheme and continue it on a process of reviewing the work processes, discussing with the service provider, and also looking at how we can make the work of the cleaners a more satisfying and progressive one.

Sir, I have three hawker centres in my constituency. The feedback from the Hawkers Associations is that they are ill-equipped to manage the calling for contracts for these cleaning contractors. Would MEWR consider consolidating cleaning contracts for all hawker centres so that we can assist the Hawkers Associations who do not know how to call for cleaning contract tenders, as well as for better economies of scale, so that we can, perhaps, with more hawker centres covered under one contract, there can be more cost savings?

Sir, I thank the Member for the supplementary questions. I am glad to hear that the Hawkers Associations see NEA as a good partner for calling of cleaning contracts. This is also a call that has been made by other Members in this House. We will consider NEA's role in the management of hawker centres. We would like to take a more cautious view because I think there is a balance to be made between centralising greater economies of scale versus more autonomy, more room to decide how cleaning should be undertaken in the various hawker centres.

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When we approached the nine affected hawker centres, the feedback from some of them was that they wanted to be more involved in the process. When they meet with an increase in cleaning costs, that is when they will start applying their mind to how to make the work better, or to be less reliant on cleaners. Some of them are even considering undertaking some of the cleaning works themselves. This is where there is always tension, whether we should want to leave the calling of the contracts and tenders to an agency, or does the Hawkers Association want to take it upon themselves and manage the risk better.

We will be happy to get into a conversation with the three hawker centres in the Member's ward, but we will like to take things one at a time. Right now, our focus is on the centres that are currently managed by NEA and would like to see how the enhanced accreditation scheme works before we consider taking on more hawker centres.

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