Hawker centres are not just commercial spaces, but also community dining spaces with a social role. NEA has invested in hawker centres to provide affordable cooked food for Singaporeans, while enabling small food businesses to earn a reasonable living, said Dr Koh.
“We have deliberately kept the barrier to entry low to allow many hawkers, including like Mr Mubarak himself, to build a successful business and expand to other food and beverage establishments.
“So we have to maintain fairness, because this is the important role that our hawker centres play. We’re happy to see our hawkers succeed, but we must also prevent individuals from gaming the system by profiteering from subletting.”
If NEA did not enforce this rule and stores are run fully by hired workers, hawker centres will become “indistinguishable” from coffee shops and food courts “eroding the authenticity”, said Dr Koh.
“Over time, our hawker culture will be diluted, shifting from passionate hawkers serving their own dishes to our customers to businesses just prioritising efficiency and scale over heritage and quality.”
While NEA supports the use of technology to improve efficiency at stalls, it should not be at the expense of hawkers stepping away from running the store themselves and leaving its manning to workers.
“If hawker(s) wish to extend to a chain model and become bigger, they have the option to move out of the hawker centres and do it at other F&B establishments where we do not impose restrictions,” Dr Koh said.
The balance between protecting the hawker heritage, and keeping food affordable and ensuring fair opportunities for new hawkers would be “quite difficult” to maintain if there are no rules to manage this.
It would have been “far easier” for NEA to let the hawker centres operate just as any other commercial outfits without any restrictions on subletting or any business models that the operator wants to do.
“But that will mean losing what makes them really special today. So if Singaporeans are prepared to accept hawker food at price points, quality and the business model, just like any other coffee shop or food courts, then we could remove these restrictions and let the free market take this cost,” said Dr Koh.
