New hawker stallholders to pay lower rents

New stallholders will also enjoy a 10% rental remission until February 2020.

Stallholders at new hawker centres will get to benefit from lower rents as the National Environment Agency (NEA) implements a staggered rent scheme requiring stallholders to pay only 80% of the full rent in the first year and 90% in the second year, according to a government statement.

This will apply to 13 new hawker centres that are expected to be completed by 2027. The first new hawker centre to implement this scheme will be at Bukit Canberra, which is targeted to be operational in the second half of 2020.

Additionally, stallholders from existing new centres in their second year of operations by 1 September will enjoy a rental remission of 10% until 29 February 2020. The three new hawker centres that will benefit from this are located at Yishun Park, Jurong West and Pasir Ris Central.

Those who also began tenancy between September 2019 to February 2020 will similarly have their rent lowered by 10% until the end of February 2020.

The scheme was implemented as NEA observed that new hawker centres took time to establish themselves.

NEA has also been fine-tuning the criteria for evaluation of tender proposals from enterprises interested to operate upcoming hawker centres, intending to give greater consideration to proposed total costs to stallholders as well as initiatives to drive footfall to hawker centres.

The scheme followed after the implementation of subsidy for centralised dishwashing on 1 January, where the agency co-funds half of the service with stallholders for the first year and 30% for the second year.

Operators also revised some contractual terms with hawkers starting the same day following a review conducted by NEA in November 2018. These terms included stall operating hours, termination notice periods and security deposits, capping of liquidated damages that can be charged to stallholders for breaches, and waiving of legal fees related to the tenancy.

To date, seven new hawker centres have been built and are operational when the new hawker centre building programme started as the government aims to complete the building of 20 new hawker centres.