The Diminishing Hawker Culture in Singapore

In the 1960s, if you wanted to make some quick money in Singapore, you’d probably become a hawker. You’d set up a pushcart stall, bring your cooking utensils and ingredients from home, arrange some tables, and voilà, you’re in business.

Not everyone liked that, though. The government at the time saw street-side hawkers as a public nuisance.¹ So, they built hawker centers and moved the hawkers into them.

Hawker centers were good for the hawkers. They were more hygienic: you had running water, places to store ingredients, someone to wash the utensils, and proper tables and toilets. Your stall was in a well-populated area, too. You just had to pay rent and a maintenance fee for all these benefits. It was a win-win.

But as the population grew, so did the need for more hawker centers. The government kept building them, and about 10 years ago, they decided they couldn’t manage all of them anymore.

So, they launched the so-called Social Enterprise Hawker Center (SEHC) program, where they let private companies run the hawker centers instead of government agencies.

I think you can see where this is going.

Under the new program, rents increased significantly. On top of that, hawkers were forced to offer meals (not some side dishes) that cost $3 or less. They had to keep their stalls open for at least 12 hours a day. They couldn’t take a day off without giving a medical certificate to the operator. And they had to let the operator know ahead of time if they were going to be sick.² (Huh?)

After reading about these App Store rules, I wonder why anyone would want to be an indie app develope… Oops, force of habit. What were we talking about? Hawkers? Right…

After reading about these SEHC rules, I wonder why anyone would want to be a hawker. It’s a lot of hard work for low pay, and it’s more like working for a crappy company instead of owning your own business.

In the end, most hawker stalls are now run by bigger businesses with more resources. Many stalls are franchised. You can find stalls with the same name all over the island. These businesses often hire low-paid foreign workers to cook the food, so the quality isn’t as good anymore.³ If you’ve been to Singapore recently and found the hawker food unremarkable, this is why.

While Singapore proudly submitted its hawker culture to the UNESCO list in 2019, it often feels like the country doesn’t really care about its hawkers. I feel like we’re the last generation to experience real hawker culture. When the current masters retire, it will be gone forever.

This is also my excuse for not writing a follow-up post about char kway teow after the ramen one.