The National Environment Agency (NEA) will be extending its Productive Hawker Centres grant to stallholders operating in hawker centres with a centralised dishwashing service. This is to help the stallholders cope with the increased cost that come with adopting a centralised dishwashing system.
There are currently 10 hawker centres with this system, including seven new hawker centres in locations like Pasir Ris Central and Bukit Panjang.
Effective from 1 January 2019, NEA will co-fund the cost of the service with stallholders, at 50 per cent for the first year, and 30 per cent for the second year. In a statement released on 16 November 2018, NEA said that the move will help stallholders transition to the centralised dishwashing system, which will reduce the overall manpower needed for dishwashing and table cleaning. Besides a quicker turnaround of tables, the centralised system will also allow stallholders to focus on their cooking and negate the need for hiring an assistant to help with dishwashing. This will also help them reduce their utility bills.
“In the past month, besides reviewing the contractual terms between operators and stallholders, NEA also conducted a review of the operating costs faced by stallholders at our new hawker centres. We recognise that these centres may need time to establish themselves and build up a clientele.
“Many of the costs faced by the stallholders, such as service and conservancy charges and table cleaning fees, are ‘pass-through’ charges. We hope that extending the Productive Hawker Centres grant for centralised dishwashing service to stallholders, will help them to better manage their operating costs in the initial years as they startup their businesses, and help to sustain our hawker trade in the long term,” said NEA CEO Tan Meng Dui.
Other initiatives for Hawkers
Between December 2018 and August 2020, hawkers can also opt to participate in a sector-wide e-payment solution under which the transaction cost and rental of terminals would be waived for a period of three years upon sign up. The e-payment solution, operated by payment service provider NETS, will provide a breadth of 20 payment types, such as EZ-Link, NETS FlashPay, and through mobile payment applications.
