Kf Seetoh: Singapore’s ‘unique heritage’ food came from afar

SINGAPORE: In a Sep 13 (Sunday) Facebook post, food guru Kf Seetoh took exception to a statement from Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu last week.

“With all due respect, Mdm Minister, our hawker food culture is not a ‘unique’ part of Singapore culture’, as you put it,” he wrote.

Kenneth Tiong (Workers’ Party-Aljunied GRC) had asked why work permit holders may be employed in coffee shops and food courts, but not in NEA hawker centres, since all are cooked-food trades.

Ms Fu had answered that because hawker centres are a unique part of Singapore’s cultural heritage, preserving the local identity and heritage of hawker culture is important. She added that only Singaporean citizens or permanent residents are allowed to be stallholders at hawker centres, and they are required to physically operate their stalls. 

Responding to Ms Fu, the Makansutra founder pointed to Singapore’s history.

“Having migrants come to build this land, flavoured our plates with their foreign heritage food is something our neighbours can also claim. Our ‘unique heritage’ food came from afar (think wantan mee, nasi padang and roti prata),” he wrote.

While there are uniquely Singaporean dishes such as bak chor mee, roti John and sup tulang merah, Malaysia can also claim to have the same.

For Mr Seetoh, what is genuinely unique to Singapore are the hawker centres themselves, which had been built “back in the day” to move “itinerant and dirty hawkers” from the streets to cleaner and safer venues.

“Yeah, it’s a neat job, from accessibility, big a** fans, spaciousness and anti-crow nets, it’s unique to us, and it’s an ongoing work in progress. (Save for the social enterprise management part),” he wrote.

However, he added that the welfare and culture of Singapore’s hawkers are not looked after by Ms Fu and her colleagues, not even by the “not even our respectable Culture Minister,” even if the industry is “one of the easiest hurdles into entrepreneurism, a safer haven from the AI onslaught of jobs, for now.”

Mr Seetoh, a longtime champion of Singapore’s hawker and hacker culture, feels that “no leader truly cares for the hawkers and their survival and welfare.”

Having pointed out that Singapore’s “unique food heritage” is perhaps not quite as unique as all that, he called for a reconsideration of the government’s hard-core rules on foreign manpower for hawkers, whose “survival and continuation depends on having assistance,” he added. 

He also called attention to the “alarming” number of food and beverage establishments that have closed so far this year, and noted how Ms Fu had stated last year that non-subsidised stalls at comparable hawker centres paid a median monthly rent of S$1,450. This is only true after six years of paying rent, he noted, adding that many hawkers don’t make it that far. 

In addition to this, there are so many other fees that hawkers have to consider, which Mr Seetoh said are “easily” double the rental fees.

He ended his post by writing: “I have been thru this list before, and even Parliament discusses and agreed it’s egregious in 2024, but it’s still there. Please, if you can’t even look after the humble folks in this industry and culture of ours, I shudder in my place.” /TISG

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