Proposals · Part VI · Year Zero, the Lighthouses and the Pilot Centres
Year Zero: give, listen, build
A twelve-month Year Zero that delivers the Security Package first, then listens and co-designs, then freezes the design only if the hawkers vote it forward.
Months 1–6 are trust deposits at both Lighthouses, Chinatown Complex and Geylang Serai: the Security Package lands in full and no survey attends any of it. Months 4–9 are listening and co-design through trusted intermediaries and dialect-capable staff, hearing former hawkers alongside current ones, with pilot documentation for three willing hawkers at each Lighthouse at full Fellowship day-rates, and the stall baseline: a two-week till count at every consenting stall (orders a day, plates an order, dollars an order and the share of orders from regulars the hawker names), by dish type, gathered by the listening teams through oral interviews and a tally sheet. It sets the Regulars' List's thresholds by dish type before the first listing and gives the Plate Ledger its first stall-level numbers. Months 9–12 bring community review, veto-threshold tests, the first Hawker Council election and board appointments, and the evaluator's published baselines; each Lighthouse opens only if its own hawkers vote it forward, and one that declines is replaced by a centre with a similar cuisine strength. The Lighthouses open in Year 1; Tekka gets the same trust deposits, listening, co-design and stall baseline in the second half of Year 1, and opens in Year 2.
Who pays
The library gives this mechanism no who-pays tag of its own.
What it costs
$906,598 SGD · Year 0 (12 months)
Year 0 net requirement
| Year | Line | Amount | Section |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yr 0 | Interim project lead – 12-month consultant | $120,000 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Research assistants – 2 × 6 months | $48,000 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Listening-champion honoraria – 5 hawkers at $500 a month for 12 months, at each centre | $60,000 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Town halls & co-design workshops – 20 sessions a centre | $80,000 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Hawker participant fees – $150 a person, about 1.25 people a stall: 283 at Chinatown Complex and 79 at Geylang Serai | $54,300 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Office, travel, communications | $54,000 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
| Yr 0 | Stall baseline – a two-week till count at every consenting stall, by dish type, at both Lighthouses: 867 interviewer hours at $50, tally sheets, a data assistant for 4 months | $65,130 | the Budget Book, B.2 |
Who gains
- Hawkers
- Trust is deposited before anything is withdrawn: insured, ducts cleaned and chiller fixed before the listening begins (§1.2, §2.9).
Where the library discusses it
§6.1 · §1.5 · §2.9 · the Budget Book, B.2
Note: The Year 0 Security Package, pilot documentation and evaluator lines are listed under hawker-security-package, technique-genome and independent-evaluation; the Hawker Council and board line ($17,000, which covers the first Council election) is listed under seed-bank-governance.
Related proposals
Sources
- SG Parliament (unofficial reproduction of the Official Report). Official Report, 19 Nov 2018, Vol 94, No 85, Oral Answers to Questions: "Different models for hawker centre management" (pp. 13–35); MOM written answer to PQ 86 (pp. 171–172); repairs and redecoration (pp. 197–198) (2018-11-19)
- National Environment Agency. Hawkers' Productivity Grant (80% co-funding capped $7,000; ~1,150 beneficiaries; applications closed 31 Mar 2026) (2026-03-31)
- International Agency for Research on Cancer. IARC Monographs vol. 95: Household Use of Solid Fuels and High-temperature Frying (2010)
- See, S. W., Karthikeyan, S. and Balasubramanian, R.. Health risk assessment of occupational exposure to particulate-phase PAHs from cooking (J Environ Monit 8:369–376) (2006)