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NOT EASY TO CATCH SUBLETTING
Mr Edward Chia (PAP-Holland-Bukit Timah) asked in a supplementary question if the current requirements for hawkers to personally manage their stall has been effective in preventing unintended subletting, and if this has unintentionally also discouraged genuine hawkers.
In his reply, Dr Koh said that physical presence was the "most practical and fair way" of ensuring that the store is not sublet. This way, NEA would be able to directly monitor whether stallholders physically operate their stores during operating hours or are subletting on the ground.
"The truth is to catch subletting is not so easy because it is a private arrangement that can take place between the person who has bidded for the place but has not intention to run it and actually under the table could have been … subletting the store to someone else and profiting from rent," Dr Koh said.
The rent for hawker stalls can sometimes be below the market rate, even as low as S$1.
"What we don't want is for a subletter to then profit from the huge margin by actually extracting rent from a person who's actually interested to run the store and pass the cost subsequently to consumers," said Dr Koh.
"And if there is a way for us to catch it better, we would want. So if there are suspicions of subletting, NEA will follow (up) on feedback where possible."
He added that NEA will also exercise flexibility to allow stallholders who need to step away from their stores for a short period of time to run errands to do so without penalty.
Associate Professor Jamus lim (WP-Sengkang) then shared that he had a resident who had sought that flexibility by asking for a window during which he had to physically be present at the store for the inspections.
He asked if providing such a window is not considered part of the flexibility.
To this, Dr Koh said that there are place managers at every hawker centre to manage the operations who hawkers can communicate with if they need flexibility on the ground.
"But if it's time and again, when the things are flouted and is too much of a repeat ask, then I think it calls into question whether there is genuine need, or whether there are some actions to try and circumvent our rules," he said, adding that NEA will have to take things on a case-by-case basis.
"In the end, it really is about what we want to (do) to see our hawker culture thrive."
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10-Mar 2025 Monday
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