Proposals · Part II · Rebuilding the hawker economy

The Relief-Hawker Corps

A pool of trained relief cooks a hawker can book for illness, rest or surgery, so the stall stays open.

PROGRAMME-SUBSIDISED · CO-PAID BY USERS
ASK OF GOVERNMENT · SPEED AND A SHORT-COVER VARIANT, NOT A NEW RULE
BUILDS ON · THE JOINT OPERATOR SCHEME & THE NOMINEE ROUTE

Locums are Seed Bank staff cooks, advanced apprentices and semi-retired veterans, each registered as a hawker assistant and cooking from the stall's Technique Genome file. The hawker co-pays $80 a day ($40 for medical leave), and the programme pays the rest: the corps member is the Corps' employee, so his day is at most 12 hours, the 4 beyond the normal 8 paid as overtime at 1.5 times, at the Progressive Wage for a cook with employer CPF (about $212 a day in 2026, $224 from July 2027 and $236 from July 2028), and on a 13-hour stall day the stall's own assistant does the first hour's prep; Year 1 provisions roughly 1,600 relief-days at the two Lighthouses, and a centre has about ten relief cooks for every 100 stalls. It doubles as a dignified semi-retirement path for veterans and as the continuous test of the archive. It builds on NEA's Joint Operator Scheme (since 2012) and the nominee route for illness, and asks NEA for speed, not a new rule: under the relief notice a pre-registered Corps cook becomes a joint operator for the days of a hawker's absence, up to 30 a year, without the standing four-hour duty, deemed approved unless NEA objects within two working days.

Who pays

PHILANTHROPY-FUNDED · ASK OF GOVERNMENT · BUILDS ON

What it costs

$80 SGD · per relief-day (hawker's co-pay)

at most 12 hours, the first 8 at his basic rate

Budget lines from the ledgers
Year	Line	Amount	Section
Yr 1	Relief-Hawker Corps – 19 members at the PWM cook rate, overtime beyond 8 hours, ≈1,600 relief-days	$360,307	the Budget Book, B.3
Yr 2	Relief-Hawker Corps – 37 members at the PWM cook rate, overtime beyond 8 hours	$694,943	the Budget Book, B.4
Yr 3	Relief-Hawker Corps – 41 members at the PWM cook rate, overtime beyond 8 hours	$757,099	the Budget Book, B.5

What it builds on

NEA's Joint Operator Scheme (since 2012) and the nominee route for illness (MSE, 11 Nov 2024 and 10 Mar 2025); registered hawker assistants (§2.7).

The ask of Government

Decision: The relief notice – a pre-registered Corps cook becomes a joint operator for the days of a hawker's absence, up to 30 a year (more with a medical certificate), without the standing four-hour duty; the days count as personal operation; deemed approved unless NEA objects within two working days
Instrument: NEA's Joint Operator Scheme and nominee route, made faster (administrative)
Fiscal cost: Zero
What it buys: Illness stops ending in a closed stall or a termination notice.

From §2.7, §7.7.

Who gains

Diners: No more handwritten "CLOSED – SORRY" taped to the shutter for three weeks; the queue stays a queue (§2.7).
Hawkers: Actual days off: the uncle gets his knee done while a trained relief cook runs the stall from his own playbook (§1.4, §2.7).

Model scores

Scored by the Follow the Plate model. How the scores work is in Follow the Plate, D.7. Cash and savings are shown separately. “Per programme dollar” is the household gain for each dollar the programme spends.

Relief-Hawker Corps (§2.7): 12 relief days a year at $80 co-pay (the Corps cook works at most 12 hours, paid the PWM cook rate with overtime at 1.5 times beyond 8 hours and employer CPF, about $212 a day)
Amounts a year	Per tendered NEA stall (NEA centre, tendered)	National, at 15% take-up (2,130 stalls)
Programme cost	$1,321	$2,814,177
Net public cost	$1,269	$1,670,258
Hawker household: cash	$2,560	$6,130,492
Hawker household: savings and other gains	$306	−$222,821
Diners	$0	$0
Per programme dollar: all gains	$2.17	$2.10
Per programme dollar: cash	$1.94	$2.18

Where the library discusses it

§2.7 · §the-plan · §3.2 · §4.2 · §6.3 · the Budget Book, B.3 · the Budget Book, B.4 · the Budget Book, B.5 · §2.11.1 · Hawkers and Social Protection, C.7 · §2.11.2 · Follow the Plate, D.7 · Follow the Plate, D.7.1 · Follow the Plate, D.7.4

Note: The model scores 12 relief days a year but covers at most the 10 unwanted closure days it assumes.