Two new hawker centres at Yishun and Jurong West will open next year, in August 2017 and September 2017 respectively.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said on its press release on 20 Dec, it will be inviting socially-conscious operators to tender for the management of two new hawker centers on a not-for-profit basis.
The new hawker centre in Jurong West is located at Jurong West Street 61. When completed, it will have 34 cooked food stalls, 14 market stalls and around 480 seats.
And the new hawker center in Yishun is located next to Yishun Park and will have 45 cooked food stalls and around 760 seats, NEA informed.
These two new hawker centers will feature natural ventilation, child-friendly toilet facilities and family-friendly seating. They also have built-in tray-return facilities.
Successful tenderer for the management of these two new hawker centers will be required to:
- Ensure availability of affordable meals for residents,
- Maintain high standards of cleanliness and bring about vibrancy at the centers.
- Propose measures to achieve productivity at the hawker centers,
- Promote graciousness among patrons, stallholders and cleaners,
- And implement food waste recycling.
The NEA also announced that social enterprise NTUC Foodfare has been appointed to run the seven more hawker centers in 2017, after a successful pilot managing the existing Bedok Interchange Hawker Center since 2014.
The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Foodfare, which also operates a hawker center at Bukit Panjang, will take over management of the five existing centers listed on the table above. It will also manage the two new centers at Kampung Admiralty and 110 Pasir Ris Central.
This appointment follows positive feedback from stallholders at the Bedok Interchange hawker center, NEA said.
The NEA statement also affirmed that for the five existing hawker centers, there will be no change to the way rentals are determined after Foodfare takes over the management of the centers.
“Subsidised stallholders will continue to pay subsidised rentals. Non-subsidised stallholders will continue to pay the prevailing market rental as assessed by professional valuers,” it wrote.
“The bundle approach would offer the operator economies of scale and greater flexibility to experiment with new ideas and operational processes to further improve the vibrancy and operational efficiency of the hawker centers,” the NEA said.
However, much is to be seen of such arrangements by NEA as prospective hawkers have publicly complained about the arrangements by tender winners of such hawker centres, by squeezing the hawkers for rental and other charges while expecting the hawkers to offer affordable food for the residents.
Read – Abuse of future hawkers while keeping prices low
