Livelihood of Singaporean hawkers destroyed by PAP

Hawkers provide an essential service but many are not justifiably remunerated. Running our country as Singapore Inc, the PAP has allowed skyrocketing rental to kill off many businesses, hawking included.

Instead of addressing this issue, PAP’s ‘solution’ is to replace Singaporean hawkers with as many foreigners from third world countries as possible. Presently, 90% of hawkers in shopping mall food courts are foreigners. As a result, the quality of authentic hawker food has deteriorated over the years.

Our top civil servants have come up with another ‘brilliant’ idea “to encourage hawker-entrepreneurship and preserve hawker heritage”. Does the PAP, with zero business sense and only knows how to profit from citizens, even know anything about entrepreneurship?Are we expected to believe a non-swimmer could actually be the national swimming coach?

In the past, hawkers were well rewarded for their hard work prior to the privatisation of public goods and services. Most of the problems started after the PAP had implemented the ‘asset enhancement’ policy which caused rental to spike out of control.

How much income (net profit) does a hawker need? Obviously not $2,000 in high cost Singapore as one might just as well be an employee. Bear in mind that a certain amount has to be set aside for retirement savings as well as CPF Medisave.

As a small business, a monthly income of $4,000 to $5,000 would be reasonable. But this is not easily attainable as evidenced by the thousands of local hawkers who have gone out of business due to high rental.

The PAP is THE landlord in Singapore and controls both the demand and supply of land. In other words, there is no real free market as rental is really determined by the PAP ie increase population density to increase rental and vice versa.

I will just use the example of a nearby food court with a monthly rental of $3,000, a $50 daily-rated assistant at $50 and $20/day cleaning services. (only 2 stalls have remained for 10 years with the rest repeatedly closing shop shortly after they had reopened) We can easily calculate how much revenue is required to earn a decent income.

Assuming raw material to be 30% of total cost, a hawker needs to sell 50 bowls at $5/bowl to break even and 70 bowls just to make $65 for the day. What about miscellaneous unforeseen costs such as equipment repair? Of course one could sell a higher quantity in, say, a shopping mall food court. But bear in mind the cost of rental is likely to be more than double and hawkers are also at the mercy of unscrupulous food court operators.

Of course the government would like food to be affordable. But by reducing the price per unit, one needs to sell a higher quantity just to break even.

Reduced per unit cost means a lot more work for hawkers.

But why should high rental be maintained at the expense of hawkers?

The PAP government has wrongly assumed it can profit from high rental but expect hawkers to reduce their selling price.

Of course some will be able to earn a decent income.

eg.

But it’s not really a lot of money considering the sacrifices and after deducting a certain percentage for retirement savings.

Of course there are success stories but hawkers deserve every cent from their hard work. It’s unlike the PAP who can just increase their million-dollar pay at the stroke of a pen by simply opening their mouths in Parliament.

Conclusion

Rental is the No. 1 killer and high rental cost also leads to higher wages.