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Inflation and the rising cost of living has hit all of us hard – not just locally, but globally, too. Even with the government’s announcement of measures such as CDC Vouchers, it’s difficult not to feel the sting on our wallets when everything costs nearly twice as much as it used to, compared to a decade ago.
On a recent podcast from CNA (Channel NewsAsia), hosts Steven Chia and Crispina Robert sat down with Sustainability and Environment Minister, Grace Fu, for a conversation about hawker centres – and one particular comment from Minister Fu ignited a firestorm online.
The hosts discussed how they felt very sad when their favourite hawker retired or closed their stalls as they didn’t have successors. Crispina said, “Alongside infrastructure, this is the main challenge, right?” to which Minister Fu replied that the livelihood of a hawker is not something Singapore’s younger generation would aspire to. They are well-educated, and “there’s actually better livelihoods besides being a hawker.”
She continued by saying that Singaporeans needed to think about how to treat their hawkers better, and if there was a better way to share food costs. “I always think that if you’re prepared to pay S$18 or S$20 for a pasta, why are you not prepared to pay S$5 for wanton mee? So sometimes we expect too much from our hawkers as well,” she said. “They actually don’t raise their prices often. They don’t raise it every year. Their costs have gone up.”
This ignited a firestorm of angry responses from netizens. Many comments blasted Minister Fu for being “out of touch”, and some also asked if she had eaten at a hawker centre recently. The cost of rental was also repeatedly highlighted, with several saying it was a main factor for rising prices.
Another netizen commented that while they did agree that hawkers needed to raise their prices in order to have a sustainable livelihood, they also said that it was likely all the money would be “sucked by landlords”.
Yet another said that due to the government constantly framing hawker food as “cheap”, Singaporeans have come to expect that all forms of it need to be “cheap”.
However, one netizen reframed the situation as follows.
At the risk of getting yelled at, I do believe that it’s not reasonable to expect prices of hawker food not to go up. If doing backbreaking work and toiling long hours as a hawker doesn’t give someone the means to live comfortably, then why become one?
While I don’t want to pay S$10 for a bowl of wanton mee, there has to be something in the trade to make it worthwhile for new blood to want to continue our hawkers’ legacies. Perhaps one day soon, a happy medium can be found between keeping hawker fare affordable, while providing them a reason to take up this trade to preserve our cultural heritage.
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