ES.2Three Facts

A month: the median full-time hawker working alone, 2021, against $1,800 for a delivery rider

$1,470

What each business day closed for illness costs the hawker at a typical tendered stall

$372

What a newcomer at the median bid pays above NEA's valuation in his first six years

$18,900

The pay has been measured once. In 2021 the median full-time hawker or stallholder working on his own earned about $1,470 a month before tax: below the poorest fifth of full-time employees ($2,200), and below the delivery riders ($1,800) and private-hire drivers ($2,000) whom the Platform Workers Act now protects. Granted, 2021 was a year of dine-in restrictions, and hawkers who employ an assistant are not in the figure. Still, it is the Government's own chart (MOM, in the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers' report, Nov 2022, Fig. 1.1; §1.1).

The body is the business. Rent, fees and the assistant's pay go on when the stall is shut, so each day closed for illness costs the typical tendered hawker about $372; a rent waiver would save only about $48 of it, and six weeks away cost about $13,400, more than a third of his year (Follow the Plate, D.3, One Plate, Six Landlords). His 13-hour, six-day week comes to about 78 hours, well past the 55 at which the WHO and ILO (International Labour Organization) find the risk of stroke rises by 35% and of heart disease by 17%. The employee in the next kitchen is paid in full for 14 days' medical leave (Hawkers and Social Protection, C.5, Work Dynamics Compared).

The newcomer pays the bid. Take a stall won at the 2023 median bid of about $1,800 a month, where NEA's valuation is $1,450. Under NEA's rule since November 2024, he pays his full bid for the first three years, then the halfway point between his bid and the valuation for the next three, and the valuation itself only from the seventh year. Over those six years he pays about $18,900 more than the valuation. On a typical stall that leaves him about $8.01 an hour in his first tenancy, below the $11.64 of his own assistant (§2.2; Follow the Plate, D.4.1, How much rent can a stall bear?).

And one cell is empty. Government keeps no register of hawker trades at risk (MCCY, 7 Oct 2026). The Regulars' List and a yearly count of the stalls at risk, which never names one, would fill it (§3.6).