Private hawker centres – LTK sounded warning in 2007

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

In January 2010, Kopitiam Square, at the junction of Sengkang East Way and Sengkang Square, was officially opened by the then Senior Minister of State for National Development, Grace Fu.

The centre cost Kopitiam $12 million to build, and consisted of 60 hawker stalls and 60 market stalls and retail shops, spread over 64,584 sq ft of space. It could seat 1,200 patrons.

“The food centre and market plays an important role in creating an identity within the community and building residents’ attachment to where they live,” Ms Fu said.

She said that “the Housing Board was interested in allowing more private operators to build and run similar facilities, so it would track closely the performance of the Sengkang centre.”

Indeed, in April of the same year, the HDB told the press that “it won’t rule out replicating its Sengkang pilot project in other new towns.”

Soon, the stall owners’ and residents’ fears were realised. The press reported that it “appears the high bid has translated to higher rents for tenants and more expensive buys for shoppers at the five-month-old wet market-cum-hawker centre in Sengkang.”

It was revealed that the average rental of a stall at Kopitiam Square was between $2,000 and $6,000 a month, compared to $56 to $3,599 for a stall at a HDB-run centre.

Soon, even MPs got into the matter, with Mr Charles Chong – then an MP of Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC in which the Square is located – saying, “Ideally wet markets and hawker centres should be privately operated, and the Government should not have to regulate too much.”

But before Mr Chong raised his concerns, the Workers’ Party MP for Hougang then, Low Thia Khiang, had highlighted the potential problem in Parliament a month earlier.

Mr Low said:

- http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014...unded-warning/


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