Is Singapore's hawker trade dying out?

By:  Walter Ng

If you’ve watched this video done by BBC News, you would know that majority of the food hawker are old and majority of them are over the age of 50.

What does this mean?
This could mean that Singapore hawkers could actually be facing out due to old age of the hawker and also in some cases, the possiblity of suffering from illness as seen in reports on The New Paper , leading to the trade dying out eventually (as there is no one to take over the business).

So what's the big problem?
As of now, the problem of the hawker trade does not seem  that serious, but in about 10-20 years, if this generation of 20-29 years olds don't step up and take over the trade, it could be serious and we might lose this hawker heritage because as seen in the BBC video, about 80% Singaporeans eat at hawker centres at least twice a week and only fewer than 5% of 20-29 year olds work in hawker stalls as of now. And true enough, even the masters also admit that being an hawker is not an easy feat, due to long hours and the heat in the stores etc.

Being a food lover myself, it just pains me to see that the food that i grew up with, for e.g, Hainanese Chicken Rice and wanton noodles would be vanished forever. Thus, i did a little research and found out that there is actually quite a number of young Singaporeans  that is currently taking over the hawker trade.

Research on the new-gen hawkers

 

Not long after, I stumbled across this article from The Straits Times

And also managed to find out more about their story here

Note: Joanne and Daniel are University graduates in the field of Biomedical Science!

Meeting the new-gen hawkers
Knowing all of the hardships that they have went through, I also personally visited their store at Old Airport Road and Daniel shared with me that initially he took quite a while to adapt to the life of being a hawker, waking up at 4am everyday just to prepare for the day’s business.

Meeting Daniel Lee
He shared with me that although it was tiring to be working for such long hours everyday (12-14hours) but it is the satisfication and the affirmation of the repeated customers that kept him and his wife going. He also said that there was once where he was serving his fishball noodles at Singapore Day held in New York and one of the aunties teared after eating his noodles and said she haven’t been eating it for the past 10 years. This is the moment where Daniel finds momenteum from his job and excelled from this point onwards.


The future of the Hawker Trade
Daniel mentioned that if the government were to come up with programmes for the people to try out to be a hawker, it may work. Because the trainees would gain confidence that is needed for them to be a hawker. And the government have also rolled out a similar scheme whereby the public could try out being a hawker.

Looking forward
With many graduates jumping on the hawker bandwagon and also the government introducing the Hawker Master Trainer programme , Singapore might actually be able to preserve our hawker heritage after all!

What do you guys think? Leave a comment below on your thoughts on this!