Re: NEA do not have system to respond to take complaint seriously

My grandmother used to sell chee cheong fun and peanut porridge at Beo
Cresent market. I had harboured thoughts of selling fishball noodles and
laksa in my retirement, transposing some of my skills in project management,
six sigma and JIT manufacturing and 5 "s" housekeeping to a hawker stall,
and with the intent to level up the general skills of some of our hawkers.
So I did some checking out.

It all boils down to costs. I checked out a few stallholders in Jurong West,
Woodlands and Senoko and was told that monthly stall rental can be as much
as sgd 4000. Hiring a helper is ~sgd 950. Assuming that the hawker works 30
days a month, that would cost him sgd 165 a day. If he does an average of
say 100 plates a day at sgd 3 per plate, half his revenue goes. The balance
goes to buying the raw materials, utilities, general cleaning as well as his
own income. Not really viable unless he increase sales. I do see some simple
fishball noodles stall continuously dishing out bowls after bowls (they
probably do more than 100 bowls a day). But majority does the average.
Increasing sales means cleaner and fresher material inputs, netting more
customers and working his hands as a faster pace. If our intent is to
provide an avenue for the 50s and 60s year olds to earn an income, this will
be difficult to realise. For these oldies who are generally lesser educated,
it will be a sturggle. More and/or younger and stronger labour input is
required. This require some rudimentary management skills. Or the hawker can
move to a higher traffic location. Cost escalates. I think hawkers should
sell their food near their home so that they mitigate or completely
eliminate transport costs.

Many posters had sounded off that hawkers have to be responsible for
hygience. I agree. They should change the boiling oil regularly like
MacDonalds, discard unsold food as we read in the papers about BreadTalk,
and keep the stall clean like Jack's place kitchen. NEA has programs to
address this, but I think we need to start levelling up, especially if we
really want to help the old nearing retirement local born Singaporean. We
had spent much resources strenghtening the security of our food chain. We
had made sure that imported vegetables and meats are safe. The last part of
the chain is preparing and dishing them out to the public. I think it is
NEA's responsibility to lay out the framework to ensure this. Sampling and
lab analysis is expensive. Compliance is cheaper and more manageable. Again
this increases cost. But it it the price of food security that the
government must shoulder.

At the end of the day, I think the only logical thing to do to reduce costs
and in the interest of the public is to reduce rentals and transportation
costs. Is the land allocated for a hawker center to be pegged to industry
pricing? Recently, I had Hor fun in Ipoh and it cost less than sgd 2 for a
"double base". A can of Oleander water less than sgd 1. Renting a shophouse
in Senai is less than rm 800. I do not buy the idea that "if we use the same
piece of land to build an office, we can get more". This argument is flawed
as it does not consider the needs of a population center. Part of the
mechanics of concentrating people in one place is to provide amenities. This
is a government responsibility. They have to refrain from inadvertantly
increasing land cost by "regulating" land supply for this kind of use. Many
suppliers to hawkers use goods vehicles to transport raw materials. This
cost has to be reduced as well as the argument for food security is more
compelling than road space usage. For it is this kind of costs that are
beyond the control of the hawker that forces him to cut cost leading to the
kind of fatal result we witnessed in the Geylang incident. Another
alternative worth discussing is to allow free market to set the equilibrium
for wages. Workers in here would be paid their worth, like workers in
Australia or the US, but food will be in US prices. Eg,. a bowl of laksa in
San Jose cost usd 7. dt

<mrtan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7c2609d3-2ed1-4d50-a7ad-fd9db3a2ef73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
NEA should have officers routinely going to all NEA hawker centres
taking food samples for lab analysis. Every store should have food
sample sent for lab analysis every year and perhaps paid by the hawker
or subsidised by NEA. This will not eradicate the problem but will
definitely reduce a lot of minor food poisoning. Attention should be
placed on food not being served hot such as rojak, curry gravy,
chinese curry rice dishes, chicken/duck rice meat etc. If this is too
much work for NEA, outsourcing is another way.

Basically spot checking without taking food sample is a waste of
time. I don't believe their eyes can see bacteria.

BTW have we heard anything from the minister in charge ?



On Apr 11, 1:03 pm, "Wang" <w...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It is because every department has to check on their KPI, one way to
increase the KPI to cut cost. Some idiots has no better ideas suggested to
cut manpower, the most costly part in government service. So, by
outsourcing
their works is most obvious way to cut manpower. Just look at the police,
you hardly see any policemen on the road nowadays.

"Zanzibar" <zanzibar_d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:802587b6-c4d2-474a-b4af-5fba06c7d263@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Apr 9, 5:02 pm, "truth" <tr...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





It is totally unacceptable for the NEA to act a few days
after the food poisoning started at Geylang Serai Indian
Rojak.
Customers complained of food poisoning on April 2nd
and the stall was still selling food until April 4th before
the NEA finally moved in to shut the stall.More people
and lives are affected.
How can the NEA claimed that they are satisfied with such
monitoring and enforcement procedures ? They are more
interested in covering their arses than protecting the health
and safety of the public. Such officers must be immediately
removed. They have failed miserably and still refused to
acknowledge their mistakes. People with such attitudes
cannot be allowed to stay in serving the public. They are a
danger to public health and safety.
Singaporeans please ask your mps and ministers how
can they behave in such callous manner. Singaporean
lives and health are at stake.

NEA does not have the system to act, to stop, or to take , or to
rectify a complaint seriously.

At the very best, they will take note of your calls and then ct
accordingly to teir own timing and speed of action.

They dont even call back to tell you what have done or what action was
taken to invesigate your complaint.

That was why they often not sure what to do because those permanent
contract in top echelon staff does not have an accoutnable system on
their own, afraid to take accountable for the decison of the
problem.

They will sit back and wait for more complaints to determine the level
of seriousness of the case based on number of call complaints
received.

Their response willl also depend on who the complainant was, and what
knd of feedbacks were given to them.

If it is a hospital, the nthey will take more seriosuly tha na
ordinary Ah pek or ah Lian.

They will not account to their own poor performance because they can
push their accountablitly to their subordinates to eat it.

This was because their subordinates are employed normally on a one
year contract of service and are directed by them to run the street
everyday doing all the dirty work for them. They are at their mercy of
employment, so to speak- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


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