[ad_1]
SINGAPORE – Unsubsidized street vendors wishing to retire will now be able to relinquish their jobs to non-relatives, in a new street vendor succession scheme proposed by a task force created to safeguard the culture of street vendors in Singapore.
It is the first scheme of its kind aimed directly at matching new entrants with seniors for “succession,” the National Environment Agency (NEA) said on Tuesday (Nov. 24), directly addressing an issue that the industry has been facing for a long time.
The national average age for street vendors is currently 59 years old, and older street vendors find it difficult to attract new entrants due, among other reasons, to strict rules that previously required some of them to pass their stalls only to family members and members of the family.
Under the new scheme to be piloted in the first quarter of next year, the NEA, with advice from an independent panel, will match these retired street vendors with new entrants so their recipes and culinary skills can be passed on, while also allows them to advise new street vendors on how to better manage their stalls.
The plan for now is for the succession scheme to help those who have at least 15 years of experience operating their street vendor businesses in street vendor centers.
There are currently around 900 of these cooked food stalls, and two-thirds of them are unsubsidized stalls.
“The veteran street vendors who will join the scheme will likely be a small subset of this group,” the NEA said.
The 19-member task force, created in April 2019, is made up primarily of street vendors.
It is co-chaired by Mr. Edward Chia, Holland-Bukit Timah GRC MP and CEO of Timbre Group, and Mr. Lim Gek Meng, President of the Chinatown Complex Hawkers’ Association and former Vice President of the Federation of Merchants Associations.
Until the change, only rent-subsidized merchants, those who were relocated from the streets in the early 1970s or assigned under a previous government hardship scheme, could assign their position to non-relatives.
Other proposals from the working group will be reviewed and implemented by the NEA, with more details to be announced next year.
The Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment, Amy Khor, in response to the proposals, referred to the ongoing nomination of the street vendor culture to the Unesco list of intangible cultural heritage.
He said the task force’s report is “timely” and helps address key challenges facing the street vendor trade.
“The idea is to facilitate the transmission of recipes, skills and practices that could be lost if the veteran leaves the scene without a successor,” he said.
If street vendor culture is to be successfully listed, Singapore will have to submit a report to Unesco every six years on its efforts to safeguard street vendor culture.
The review conducted by the working group had identified five main challenges faced by the street vendor trade, namely: negative public perception towards the street vendor trade, difficulties faced by new entrants to enter the profession, challenges faced by veteran street vendors to find successors, growing challenges and competition from other food and beverage entities, and limited support for purchasing equipment.
If the Unesco nomination is successful, the street vendor culture will join more than 463 similarly identified items, including Chinese shadow puppets in China, the making and distribution of kimchi in North and South Korea and yoga in India.
There are currently about 6,000 street vendors spread over 110 street vendor centers.
Evolving alongside Singapore’s urbanization over the years, street vendors have transformed from individuals selling their fare on the streets to peddlers in today’s most urbanized street vendor centers.
[ad_2]
