ES.5What It Costs, and Who Pays

Four years, three centres

$19.68M

Reaches hawkers directly

72.4%

Endowment target

$40M

New statutes

0

The programme costs $19,683,808 over Years 0–3 at three centres, each costed from its own heritage stalls and size, in ledgers a hawker could read at the counter; 72.4% of it reaches hawkers directly (Part VII). That is $4,693,468 more than in version 1.2, and I would rather say so plainly. Most of the rise is that apprentices are now paid the Progressive Wage (the pay ladder the Government sets for lower-wage jobs) for a stall assistant (the minimum MOM sets for that job), with employer CPF, for all eighteen months. The rest comes from three changes: the Fellowship no longer stops dead after its teaching year, the relief day is now a lawful working day, and each centre's orders are counted before it opens. Old Airport Road would add $5,586,777 and Maxwell $4,412,940.

The endowment pays part of each year's cost, not most of it. Each year it spends 3.5% of its value – $420K, $1.05M and $1.4M in Years 1–3 – and bridge grants (a temporary grant that covers a gap until the fund is full) of about $13.5M, raised before the fund is full, cover the rest. I have printed that gap rather than hidden it. From Year 4 that yearly spending, the Government's operating match (the Government's yearly grant towards running costs) and continuing gifts carry all three centres, and on the central assumptions no year runs short. That rests on how many new Fellowships each centre must fund, an assumption until the yearly count comes in, and I have printed how far it can move (§7.8). If the campaign stalls once it has raised its first $12M, both Lighthouses keep running and Tekka waits.

Read across the rows and a pattern appears. Hawkers' own bodies speak for the trade and honour a few masters each year, with an award, not a wage; the Mayors' CDC Vouchers (Government vouchers for every household) carry real money to the stall; charities pay hawkers for meals their beneficiaries redeem. Yet no scheme does any of these things. None pays a retiring hawker for his goodwill (what a stall's name, recipes and regulars are worth when it changes hands); the few private sales are one-off deals. None pays a master a year's wage to teach. None keeps his recipes in an archive good enough to cook from. None tops up a new cook's income for his first two years, sends a relief cook so a hawker can take a day off, or holds an endowment for the trade. Those gaps are this plan. One row is empty: knowing who is at risk, which no one counts today and the plan's yearly at-risk count fills from Year 1 (§3.6). Repairs and exhausts already have owners in NEA (National Environment Agency, which runs the public hawker centres), the Town Councils and the stallholder; what is missing is help with a stall's own equipment between the Productivity Grant's phases. Where others already act at scale, the plan works through them, and much of it is not new. The Government's own panels proposed rents set in advance, bulk buying and keeping traditional hawker food in 2012 and 2017. Two Members, Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa, proposed a ballot for stalls in Parliament in 2024; §2.2, Rent Bands & Ballot answers the Government's four objections to it. Master-apprentice fellowships have run in France since 1994 (the Record, A.7). Most of the bill falls on gifts and the endowment. The State is asked for money in five places – its first gift to the endowment and the pool that matches gifts, an operating match, a round of Makan Vouchers, the tax given up on gifts and a table-cleaning fee subsidy at the pilot centres – and succession pays for itself.