This is one of those LPKLG article.
LPKLG ? Lim Pei Ka Li Gong ( Let me tell you )
One of those drafts that has sat in my work folder for months, maybe years, likely written when i’m drunk. Or maybe one of those nights where sleep just would not come because i have too many things on my mind.
This is about food prices, yes, our national infatuation with food, caifan, chicken rice and of course, curry puffs. We import almost everything, there are only so much we can do to try and control food costs. CDC vouchers, GST vouchers, we need currypuff vouchers, oldchangkee vouchers, soyabean vouchers. If it were up to me, i’ll even give out Geylang vouchers.
For the food la brother. Geylang has a lot of good food.
They can come up with all the policies they want, they can cramp a hundred scholars in a room led by a dozen army generals, they cannot solve this food cost problem unless….unless they implement what i have in mind.
LPKLG.
We need to take a step back into the past.
The true, blue Singaporean spirit.
Our roots.
The original one.
Illegal hawkers.
SMLJ you say?
Listen first.
The solution to high food prices isn’t more regulation,it’s no regulation. An all out culinary free for all.
A glorious return to the early days of independence, when entrepreneurial aunties and uncles roamed the streets with pushcarts,kerosene lamps, and the kind of “food safety standards” that can be summed up as: if you can fucking stand tomorrow, means you are ok.
Prawn allergy? Nut allergy? gluten allergy? Lan par la, just eat it, let your body evolve like x-men and continue your day.
The formula is simple, more simple than trying to implement some Health365 move more = save money on medishield premiums.
My formula is;
Unregulated hawkers = no rent = cheap food = Happy Singaporeans.
Tio bo?
Why is food cost expensive today?
It includes rent, utilities, worker levy, GST, tray return, landlord takes a cut and emotional damages from dealing with influencers asking you for free food to advertise for you. Don’t want to give free food? They leave bad reviews.
Illegal hawkers?
No rent.
No licensing.
No NEA officer breathing down their necks, no influencers trying to help you promote your business.
Wah lau, is this not the paradise all aspiring F&B owners are looking for?
If you can operate a home based business selling brownies out of your HDB kitchen, what’s so hard about dragging a wok down to void deck and frying char kway teow beside the lift?
Just hammer together a push cart, make it look like one of those Japanese street side ramen store and you’re done.
Maybe someone can IKEA hack something together with their existing offerings too.
Isn’t this the best idea to ever come out of this site?
Now at night, you hungry, what are your options?
Order food lor, Macdonald, or go to your nearest prata shop.
With this new policy, just imagine this.
You walk out of your house at 1.30am and you’re greeted by a man selling porridge from a bicycle.
At 2am, someone is grilling satay right under your block because “the wind here better.” Make the charcoal burn fiercer.
3am, the smell of curry puffs floods your corridor because your neighbour decided to expand operations.
Isn’t this the vibrant food hub Singapore has been aspiring to become?
Tourism will explode. Confirm plus chop.
Foreigners will fly in just to experience “The Singapore Street Food Hunger Games.”
No limits, no regulations, just food.
When the streets are flooded with illegal hawkers, customers, delivery riders, and random uncles kaypohing, guess what?
The streets are never empty.
No dark alleys. No lonely corners. No suspicious shadows.
Crime rate drops because criminals also start selling food instead.
If you can choose between smuggling kpods or earning $500 cash a night from selling fried chicken skin without paying rent… brother, it’s not even a debate.
Fried chicken in fact, fried anything wins anytime.
The transport sector wins too.
More supper crowd means more Grab, Gojek, Comfort, all also win.
Finally, an economic policy that benefits everyone, except maybe the NEA officer who has to pretend not to see char siew being roasted in a carpark or roti prata being made beside the playground.
But don’t you think this makes sense?
You cannot complain that cai png is $9 because of rent when the uncle selling beside the bus stop is charging $3.50 and operating on a foldable table from Daiso.
Market competition at its purest.
Wait James, what about hawker centres?
Those run by social enterprises?
Please lah. This kind of smoke and mirrors, you know i know. Sometimes we just pretend we don’t know and we don’t say.
Social enterprise hawker centres are just food courts wearing Uniqlo pretending to be atas.
All the “helping hawkers” talk is smoke and mirrors. Making you prepay for ecredits is not innovation it’s cash flow optimisation disguised as charity. You go some places cut hair, pluck eyebrow, remove mole, wax pubic hair, all the same isn’t it? You pay first, put money in my pocket, then use a little bit, i give you discount.
Mai lai la.
And best part?
Illegal hawkers don’t need to give compulsory 10% discounts. Discount simi?
Want to eat you eat, don’t want to eat you fuck off.
Our forefathers built the nation with this attitude. No need to panter to influencers taking picture, taking video.
Nothing changes for restaurant folks. There will always be people who demand better service and dining environment.
You want aircon? Table service? Someone to refill your water? Go ahead.
This proposal isn’t forcing anyone to eat street food. It’s about giving everyone a choice. You want regulated, sit under a big ass fan, can air armpit and slurp your mee pok, can. You want to walk up to the push cart in your discoloured underwear, sit with one leg on the bench to slurp porridge without being chop like a carrot head, that is an option too.
But unregulated street food, like not safe leh bro.
You look at the news nowadays.
Rat crawling in bread shop, cockroaches in soup, mold in bun, glass in bubble tea. Then how? also like that?
Issue warning, give you demerit point.
If illegal hawker, you see something like this, you on the spot verbal fuck the hawker, you both trash it out. Then case close. No tax payers money wasted on investigation, lab testing, audit.
With illegal stalls, it’s ‘eat at your own risk’
You get stomach ache, you take one day MC, your fault for not evolving a stronger stomach, this is life.
People forget, the illegal hawkers used to be community glue. They knew who had just given birth and needed confinement food, which kid needed more gravy because cannot swallow rice, which old uncle cannot chew pork and needed chopped up steamed chicken. They set up beside a drain, wipe their wok with yesterday’s T-shirt, and somehow Singapore made it to SG60 because our grandparents not only survived, they thrived.
The only standards people really care about these days are price and taste.
Why not let things go back to the natural ecosystem?
Just bring back illegal hawkers, and may the strong stomach survive.
James S