Return of Used Utensils at Food Centres

Mr Speaker, Sir, the cleaning industry is at an inflexion point. Cleaning used to be characterised by very tough working conditions and low pay. Consequently, few Singaporeans, especially younger Singaporeans, were or are willing to enter this industry. With our recent moves to tighten the supply on foreign labour, this industry is going to have to restructure, and restructure significantly. Our vision is for our cleaners to have a fairer and higher wage and to have better working conditions. NEA is working with the Hawker Associations as well as Town Councils to engage better and more reliable cleaning companies that are willing to pay fair wages and to train their personnel and provide the necessary equipment.

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The ultimate goal is for all hawker centres to only engage accredited cleaning companies. Efforts are currently on-going on multiple fronts to improve the standards and professionalism of the cleaning industry. We launched the NEA Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme back in July 2010. There have also been other incentive schemes to support job re-design and better equipment in order to raise productivity and professionalism so that these jobs can pay better and be more attractive.

Besides increasing cleaning standards through accreditation, we also need to encourage patrons of hawker centres to reduce the reliance on cleaners by returning their used crockery and utensils in order to speed up the cleaning process.

To be honest with you, there have been several campaigns in the past but these have been of limited success. We are reviewing the lessons learnt from these past efforts to see how we can better re-launch a tray-return initiative that is sustainable for the long term. Together with like-minded partners, such as the Singapore Kindness Movement, we aim to launch this refreshed initiative at a few hawker centres in the latter half of this year. This initiative will require both customer involvement as well as the provision of tray-return facilities to improve accessibility and the convenience of doing this. Existing centres will need to be retrofitted with tray-return facilities and, certainly, new hawker centres will be designed with these facilities in mind.

The cleanliness of our hawker centres is important not just for public health but also for the viability of our stall-holders' businesses, for the dining and quality of the experience of the patrons. All of us who operate either a business or patronise hawker centres need to do our part.

The future for the cleaning industry as a whole is that all of us are going to have to learn to cope with fewer cleaners. This means the different stakeholders will each have to play their respective roles. For instance, as patrons, as customers, we will all have to be more gracious and more considerate, not only for the burden of the cleaners but also for the patrons to join us at the table or eat subsequently at the same table as us. I would point out that it is very wrong to take the attitude that this is a paid-for service, therefore, I do not need to return the tray or I do not need to clean up the mess that I leave behind. I think we should flag this out as simply ungracious and inconsiderate behaviour.

Secondly, the owners of such facilities – certainly, in the case of hawker centres, NEA will play a role – will have to pay more attention to better design and to improving the workflow so that it is easier to maintain a place and keep it clean.

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Thirdly, we need enlightened employers who will pay people a fair wage, improve working conditions, invest in the necessary training and automation.

Sir, I thank the Minister. I fully support his direction. I appreciate that. The food centre cleaner jobs are, like the Minister said, often shunned by locals and, in fact, often staffed by the elderly who are mostly unskilled and who have no other options for work. Therefore, installing facilities for the patrons to return their used utensils would, indeed, be very important. I have seen it happened successfully in organisations like IKEA and some more progressive companies at their staff canteens. I do strongly believe that it needs to be done. Since it reduces the hardship of, especially, the elderly cleaners and it does encourage co-ownership of maintaining a clean and pleasant environment for both the patrons and the public, I would like to ask if Minister could accelerate and be more aggressive in the installation of these facilities, especially for the current upgrading of existing food centres/hawker centres and, for the new ones as well.

When?

We are re-launching tray-return in the last quarter of this year. So, within the next few months, you should see some work in some of the centres. All the new centres will certainly have this, and then we will have to retrofit. We have altogether 107 hawker centres, so it is not something I can do overnight.

But the more important message is to flag out behaviour and social norms for Singaporeans. Singapore may be a clean place but it is often due to the hard work of the cleaners rather than the consideration and behaviour of us, Singaporeans. We need better role models and I can think of countries like Japan, Korea, and I have heard, nowadays, even Taiwan, are cleaner, not because they have more cleaners but because people are more considerate and more gracious. That is a harder message but it is one which I hope I will have support from Members of this House, both from the Opposition and the Government to push through. We need that and I think the Opposition, now that you are running Town Councils and hawker centres and cleanliness in your own areas, I think you will agree with me this is an issue which we all need to work together on.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for his reply. I agree with the views of my two fellow hon Members. As Minister has said, cleaning up after ourselves is an act of consideration. However, I have personally come across a number of cleaners and seen other patrons who have been told not to clear our trays because the cleaners were fearful that they might be rebuked by their supervisors, or worse off, lose their jobs because of that. So, while promoting kindness through this process, I would like to ask if the Ministry would also have guidelines in place to ensure that our low-wage workers who, perhaps, depend on this as their sole livelihood, would have their livelihood protected, as well as ensure that operators do not use this simply as an effective cost-cutting measure by getting consumers to clean up for them.

I would like to reassure the House that no cleaner is going to lose the job because we all are more gracious and more considerate, and clean up after ourselves. In fact, there is going to be a structural and chronic shortage of cleaners in the future. This is not a problem which we are going to solve simply by opening the floodgates or even trying to pay people more. Let me assure the House this will not result in unemployment amongst cleaners. In fact, the opposite is going to be the situation in the future.

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