Dr Vivian Balakrishnan wants more Singaporeans to become hawkers
Posted by temasektimes on May 13, 2012
In the good old days, Singaporean parents had always exhorted their children to work hard so as to become a doctor, lawyer or some professional in the future.
However, Minister for Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan said he hoped to see more Singaporeans to become hawkers instead.
Speaking during a community event on Saturday, Dr Balakrishnan said he wants to encourage Singaporeans to view the ‘hawking profession’ more favorably:
“To make sure that there are enough Singaporeans who want to go into this business … I have to make sure that we send the message that there will be places available, there will be reasonable rentals,” he said.
Dr Balakrishnan had announced the building of 10 new hawker centers over the next 10 years and the removal of minimum bids for stalls in April which have led to a drop in rental prices of hawker stalls.
“All these factors mean that rentals are going to fall, and I’m quite happy for that to happen, because our key objective is to provide good and affordable food for Singaporeans out in the heartlands,” he added.
Dr Balakrishnan added that his ministry is also looking into ways to train and upgrade skills of hawkers:
“There are many areas we can work on to uplift our hawking profession, and I think in the years ahead, I want to make it an attractive and honourable profession for Singaporeans to move into, and especially for younger Singaporeans.”
THE TEMASEK TIMES 
Mikey said
Yeah great idea genius..
FTs become PMETS, Singies become hawkers..
Brilliant.. we pay u millions for that eh?
zul said
good one mikey! And when we became hawkers, we serve the FT? Holy crap
ah troll said
1) MAKE SINKIES become hawkers so as to be looked lowly upoon by his treasured FT berthern.
2) claim to make rent reasonable and then jack everything up citing lack of land area and INFLATION among other things, make sinkies pay through their noses to either these fuckfaces or some other rich mofo who may or may not even be sinkie.
3) food could have and should have been a heck lot more affordable, but nooooooo they had to shove their inflation cocks down everyone’s throat. with all these new hawkers slogging day and night they can then say “demand outstrips supply, inflation is UNAVOIDABLE. CAN’T BE HELPED…”
4) and then cause hawker food to again shrink in portion and ride higher in price, dr balalala can sing his U WANT 3 MEALS A DAY IN HAWKER CENTER, FOOD COURT OR RESTAURANT?
Ken Lee said
THE NEXT TIME THEY WILL SAY NO SINGAPOREAN WANT TO BE HAWKER SO WE IMPORT FT TO BE ONE!
Jane Wong said
If you noticed ther are already many FT operating as hawkers selling their hometown delicacies…..haiz……….
Utter Rubbish said
Good proposal our honorable minister! Why not ask your children to change their aspirations from doc/lawyer to hawker now. As one of our country’s leaders, you need to lead by example right?
Mahesh said
so that foreigners can be doctors?
freetrolleysingapore said
The grand master plan for locals: hawkering. Are you fucking kidding me!
Old Singaporean said
It is good ideas if you only limited to singaporean and not like present, where many hawkers are foreigners including malaysian, china chinese and some other nationalities holding work permit to work as hawkers, why MOM and HDB allow this, I wonder??
NO POINT CREATE SOMETHING PRETENDING TO GIVE “SIGNAPOREAN” WHERE LATER BRING IN ALL FOREIGNERS INTO THIS BUSINESS AND ELIMINATE ALL SINGAPOREAN BY SAYING THE SAME OLD SENTENCES” SINGAPOREAN MUST BE COMPETITIVE, PRODUCTIVITY, ETC, ETC”
How you want singaporean to survive in this country if you keep on allow MOM to slot in all the vacancies with foreigners.
For the sake of singaporean, please immediately remove S-pass/EP department and expel all foreigners with S-pass/EP out of singaporean and think of other innovative/ creative way to bring singapore and all singaproean to the next level such as giving incentives/rebates to local employers who engages singaporeans, or even heavily subsidize singaporean to open their own business, especially 90% subsidize to those 50 years old and above….., they are many many way to generate business and boosting economy ourselve without rely on S-pass/EP holders (even we acknowledge we need foreigner worker with work permit) …….. I strongly belive many singaporean can tolerate singapore short term suffering due to expel all s-pass/EP if what you did is for singaporean.
Please Change it! Have a revolutionary Change and you will restore many ex-PAP voters!
peking Dog xu sunn said
So whom children will become hawker?
kowboochua said
I want to see Vivian be a hawker in his twilight years…………
jaded said
you want to uplift the hawking culture? simple. just leave them alone! the pappies are still too stupid to see that all their rules and regulations effectively killed off our once vibrant street food scene.
Parameswara said
Some regulations are needed – food hygiene, basic food handling standards, licensing. I will not mind these. But keep rental low so that we can have affordable local food. Once vibrant food scene was also afflicted with occasional food poisoning/diarrhea so why not have some regulations and regular food handling refresher courses.
Henry said
Ok, a need a simpler process to get a license … Do not charge COE rates!
Francis Lee said
Encourage Singaporeans to serve more FTs! Aren’t we now??
Cancer said
Great!! I can now tell my children to take it easy in their studies as the govt has promised to create an attractive & honorable profession (CHO – Chief Hawkering Officer, CHFO – Chief Hawkering Finance officer etc) for them if they can’t make it to university or not able to secure a scholarship from the govt.
Regime change said
In the good old days, there were not many graduates. We send tens of thousands of dollars to get our children educated and then ask them to be hawkers. Why don’t you lead the way!
UpYours! said
Study uni to become hawker?
Might as well be hooker, earn much higher right?
Jane Wong said
Make sure that you are above 18 years of age…..!!!
Milli Vanili said
Alamak .. paid millions to come out with shitty ideas like this .. walau please lah. Don’t make a fool of yourself. Any father mother soon also got think of this idea before. If you don’t have any good ideas that use less money but can make more money for local sgporeans please don’t open your trap and spout rubbish like this. For the love of god please spare me from this torture of hearing BS solutions … I am sick already.
bankrupt character said
He has sold his soul for million dollar salary. What a different vivian before and after he join pappies, tsk, tsk, tsk…..shame ;((
Csm said
We had a vibrant hawker scene offering a decent living till they screwed it up. With their “upgrading” and tendering leading to spiralling prices forcing independent workers out of business and introducing the leeching “operators” who then import cheap foreign labour (talent my foot) dishing out factory produced food. Almost destroyed our hawker culture, not to mention many livelihoods. Now reinventing the wheel to create jobs for locals displaced by other flawed policies. Back to the past.
Sg Kampung Boy said
As with everything else the PAP touches, they screw it up. First, they regulate the hawkers so heavily that the food becomes tasteless and no one wants to be in the trade; next they jack up rents so high that it is not economically feasible to be a hawker; now this brilliant idiot who is a so-called Minister want to make it an “honourable profession” and encourage people to become hawkers! Maybe all our Ministers and former MMs and SMs should become hawkers as they are the most “honourable” Singaporeans among us! Hey Hsien Loong, can I have a plate of mee siam mai hum?
speechless said
is Vivian training his children, grand children to b hawker, setting an example…?
by-stander said
in a way which i interpreted his statement…for those who is identified as low income group earners please learn the culinary skills we have 10 hawker center for you to become hawking professional (‘we’ can train you to cook…but you need to pay ‘me’)…when u are at that level your pricing of food will be as close as those in the restaurant bringing sg food culture to higher end…but dont dream to become rich, ‘i’ built good facilitated hawker center u have to pay more rental…if u cannot cope with the cost think out-of-the-box getting cheaper labor you can find…dont whine if u cant cook…
catsrearend said
Alamak VB… (means Very Bodoh is it???) You have never ceased to amazed me with your stupidity. We pay you millions and this is ALL you can come up with to help fellow Singaporeans!!!!!! So are your children going to be hawkers soon???!!!
S'porean Hawker said
Why new markets and hawker centres were not built since 1990?
NS and hawkers for S’poreans, jobs and flats for foreigners.
PAP has run out of ideas to help S’poreans, time for a change in GE2016?
Spenser Chan said
Hawkers use to perambulate their food but that is not the case anymore,so why refer them as hawkers ?
They are food stall operators now.
HAwker Son said
My parents used to pay $200 a month for rental…. now, we get to lease owned the stall for $1500 per month for 20 years… FML.