We want no-frills but good food: in hawker centres...

[KARTer]

Life is about choices. A good govt will provide a range of choices for its pple so that the latter can choose based on affordability.

 

Lets look at food. Way back, there were many hawkers centres, simple coffe shops round the corner to provide affordable, no-frills, and generally tasty food for day to day meals. For those who prefer a better ambience or aircon etc, they can go to restaurants or the few foodcourts around. Higher-end eateries were also availabe. Overall, the choices were wide and quite evenly spread out. The people had the choice in terms of price range or ambience etc.

 

Today, the choices are limited as far as low-end food is concerned. The people, especially those who live on a relatively tight budget, or prefer to spend their money on other items in life, have to search high and low for affordable or value4money meals.

 

The cause of this?.... Well, ever since some 30 years ago HDB has decided to stop building simple, comfortable no-frills hawkers centre (which usually come with low rentals and therefore cheaper food), and at the same time lease out coffee shops using the tender system (where highest bidders get to run the coffees shop and sublet the stalls), we see million dollars coffee shops mushrooming all over the place. The stall holders are forced to pay high rent to the head-leasees and have to recover costs by selling a simple plate of noodle at $3 or more instead of the previoius $2. Granted the costs of raw food/ingredients and power/water rates have gone up over the years, but the key and most significant cost is rental cost.

 

It took pap a good 20 years or more to admit their promotion of expensive coffee shops and foodcourts may not be a good move and that it denies the ordinary people affordable daily meals. They'd better put up new no-frills hawker centres (but with good ventilation and lighting through decent designs), cut out the fancy decorations and seats/tables in 2-3 years (more than enough time to build as compared with casinos' construction) instead of 10 years. If miw really cares for the low- middle/low- income groups, they'd better show it with actons, otherwise its just mere cheap talk.

Edited October 22, 2011 by KARTer

[Rncw]

nowadays i eat at canteen at industrial areas....average 2.20 to 2.70 for lunch

[Kb27]

Build cheap rental hawker centres costs the gahmen to lose money, when the same piece of land can bring in millions more.

[Jman888]

a lot of the younger generation do not want to take over the skill or business, the food will still be bore, it will happens in Malaysia or HK.

[Sabian]

a lot of the younger generation do not want to take over the skill or business, the food will still be bore, it will happens in Malaysia or HK.

At least the boring food will be cheaper. Not like some places now, crappy food that is pricier.

[Donut]

The garment is always taking things into their own hands. They make decisions by themselves, without consulting the people.

 

Since when they consult the people about;

 

Hawker centers vs food courts

Transit link cards where we are forced to pay for the "modern" tech

ERP charges

 

[Rncw]

The garment is always taking things into their own hands. They make decisions by themselves, without consulting the people.

 

Since when they consult the people about;

 

Hawker centers vs food courts

Transit link cards where we are forced to pay for the "modern" tech

ERP charges

 

the elite plans whats good for the peasants based on their elite standards....peasants cannot afford lah...

[Super7]

Build cheap rental hawker centres costs the gahmen to lose money, when the same piece of land can bring in millions more.

The govt owns plenty of land, its not like bankcrupting them if they can allocated say 0.5% of land for low-cost hawker centres so that the people can have a choice of cheap and good food. 0.5% of the land can easily accommodate 50 such hawker centres. Is the govt role only to make money, and for what? How about making it possible for a bit of happiness for the people thru cheap&good food? not too much to ask for....

[Tanahbeng]

Garment make all!!!

[Jtay]

If land is an issue, perhaps it would be useful for gov to think abt better utilizing the land occupied by hawker centers. For example, by integrating it with a multi-storey car park (since hdb now faces lack of parking spaces) or integrating with offices (eg Amoy hawker centre)

Edited October 22, 2011 by Jtay

[Karoon]

Build cheap rental hawker centres costs the gahmen to lose money, when the same piece of land can bring in millions more.

 

dats one thing i really dislike about this country, every single item must maximise profit, even at the expense of the ordinary people. from basic hawker stalls to public buses and trains.

[Scb11980]

the elite plans whats good for the peasants based on their elite standards....peasants cannot afford lah...

because they know peasants

no brain and no b a l l s

only make noise

so that is why get bolder and bolder

[Kb27]

The govt owns plenty of land, its not like bankcrupting them if they can allocated say 0.5% of land for low-cost hawker centres so that the people can have a choice of cheap and good food. 0.5% of the land can easily accommodate 50 such hawker centres. Is the govt role only to make money, and for what? How about making it possible for a bit of happiness for the people thru cheap&good food? not too much to ask for....

Unfortunately, 60.1% agree wif a SG INC gahmen.

Every piece of sq ft must bring in $X.

If not, it's considered SUBSIDY or LOSS.

 

Your parks today may be gone tomorrow, except the golf courses which is much needed by the elites.

 

[Yeobh]

The cost of high hawker food high price - due to sub-letting & low productivity(cause by of small working space and low level of investment in labour saving tools/equipment.) Other causes are time spend in cleaning the store after business, poor cooking skill, too many layer of suppliers & etc etc.

[Seaweed]

ai ya...tell you what happen a few yrs ago...my hse downstair kopishop...the first guy who run it somehow manage to last a long long time...something like around 5 yrs since the neighbour began...food stalls were all occupied and food was reasonably good and price...

 

Then suddenly the kopishop close...then i see renovation going on...and after something like 1 or 2 weeks...i was like...oh...a new operator took over because i saw a new name...since then...something will keep happening...

 

1) Very frequently I see the kopitiam renovating...(change owner)

2) The stalls are always never fully occupied...except the first few weeks when a new operator just took over...

3) The price of food can increase by nearly 16% with every change...

 

Being a typical Singaporean...I was brought up with a virtue call "complaint"...so i write in to HDB to complaint...And I tell them if they don't control and let idiots just bid higher and higher...and afterwhich the cost pass to the stall holder and the stall holder pass to the consumer...it is just going to go worst day after day...They saw the complaint and call me up to explained how they work...They will invite big operators to bid for kopishop in town center etc...those standalone kopitiam beside the blocks of HDB...they will only allowed small operators to bid...I ask them if they ever did analyse if the price these pple bid are realistic...obviously the answer is no..the highest get it..."free market"...

 

I told them that the purpose of the kopitiam is to provide convenient and affordable food for pple living around it...if that is how they run the bidding...the convenient and affordable part is definite out because the kopishop will keep having renovation and after each renovation the price will up!! The agree and say they will look into their process and fine tune it...but it seem to me that it all talking because nothing had change...

 

Into the price of HDB...what are the two main cost of a HDB...I guess even a primary sch kid can tell it is construction and land cost...being a free market...construction cost won't differ much and it being pay to a private construction company who need a profit...we can't tell our goverment to do something about it....make it cheap...but how about land cost...how we determined this land cost..."free market" again...drive up the land cost...then give a discount and say we already provided heavy subsidy...until today after so much talking...we have only keep hearing HDB say they lost money...but how they lost money...they didn't say...or it my fault I didn't see or hear what they say...

 

If every month I earn a million dollar afterwhich I give it to my wife...and I complaint I am poor...I think something is not very right !!! [nod]

 

 

[Seaweed]

why your side so cheap ?? mine side used to be 3 for two meat one vege....now become 3.3 liao...chicken rice...they put due to high cost...very sorry we need to increase to 3.5 (used to be 3)...

[Donut]

The govt owns plenty of land, its not like bankcrupting them if they can allocated say 0.5% of land for low-cost hawker centres so that the people can have a choice of cheap and good food. 0.5% of the land can easily accommodate 50 such hawker centres. Is the govt role only to make money, and for what? How about making it possible for a bit of happiness for the people thru cheap&good food? not too much to ask for....

 

Land cost nothing to the garment lah. It's under SLA. So land value is just paper value.

 

Obviously the garment is after $$.

 

Same goes to HDB flats. Why the flats cost so much???

[Donut]

The garment is too obsessed with this tender system. Everything they just tender out. What are they for then?

 

Any idiotic company can do that. We don't need the garment to sit there and tender every project out. They forgot the role of public service and public policy.

 

They don't want to serve the public in the true sense. Instead they just tender out everything, let the private operator deal with the public and they just sit there collect $$.

 

Why do we need them then?