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Some Hawkers Said Some Patrons Have Mistakenly Thrown Away Tableware After Tray Return Became Compulsory

2022-08-31 , 4:31 pm

When the National Environmental Agency (NEA) enforced the rule that diners have to return their own trays and cutlery starting from 21 July 2021 onwards, the reactions were mixed.

For school students, it feels like the typical cafeteria experience; putting your trays and plates back to the correct stalls is practically an ingrained habit.

For those that have long left their schooling days behind, it’s more than likely that some time was needed to adjust to the change.

Afterall, no one wants to get fined $300 or more for leaving behind their plates.

Progress Review For The Year

It has already been a little over a year since the rule kicked in.

Hawker centres and eateries have become much cleaner, but another issue has cropped up: the bowls, plates and utensils are going missing.

It’s not one or two.

Hawkers in Fengshan Hawker Centre realised that they have lost at least 300 to 400 bowls in one year, and they suspect that it is because diners are throwing them away by accident.

Whoops?

Chen Guishan, a vendor selling desserts, helplessly told a reporter from 8world News that in the past year, the average number of bowls he has been losing on a daily basis is several times more than before the self-returning of trays and cutlery was enforced.

Mr Chen admitted that it was not rare for bowls to disappear, but it has never happened at such a high frequency. In the past, he would only lose one or two bowls at most. Now he is losing nearly 10 to 20 bowls a day.

He estimates he has lost at least 300 to 400 bowls in the past year.

Given that one bowl costs around $4, the cost of buying new bowls is not a small sum.

Another anonymous barbeque vendor agreed, stating that her plates have been “flying away” despite having no wings. (It’s a Chinese idiom, just roll with it.)

Her case is slightly different though.

Her stall usually lines the plate with a pandan leaf before putting the food on top. Hence, it’s possible that some diners completely miss the fact that there is a plate, so they end up chucking the entire pandan leaf and plate into the rubbish bin after they are done eating.

Seriously though, if this becomes one of the reason why stall owners increase their prices, Singaporeans will not be happy campers.

The authorities do have a way to deal with hawkers who raised prices unjustly due to the impending GST hike:

But of course there’s no way to deal with hawkers raising prices due to…lost bowls.

Cleaners Were Reminded To Pay Attention

Ms Cai, who runs a minced meat noodle stall, also noted that many of her soup spoons and chopsticks have gone missing.

Hence, before she dishes out the food, she will ask the diners where they are sitting. If they happen to be sitting further away, she will give them disposable cutlery, lest the cutlery never returns.

“We have told the cleaners that our cutlery keeps disappearing, and asked them to keep a lookout.”

Feng Shan Hawker Centre’s association chairman Liu Teguang confirmed that he has been receiving a lot of similar complaints recently. The management has already instructed the cleaners to keep an eye out for these incidents, just in case the diners throw away the cutlery and utensils by accident.

A cleaner by the name of Chen Fucai said he would pick up small bowls from the rubbish bin whenever he notices one, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything if he doesn’t see it first.

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A Cleaner Environment

According to a reporter’s observation during lunch hour, there were only one or two groups of diners who did not return their own trays within one or two hours.

One of the diners believes that the current conditions in the hawker centre are much cleaner than before, regardless of whether it is the place itself or the tables and chairs.

Another female diner frankly said that she got into the habit of returning her own tray because she was forced to. She felt that this regulation was “very good”.

Mr Lin, the father of two children, would always return his own tray whenever he brings his children to the hawker centre for a meal, because it was important for him to set an example.

However, some diners remarked that more could be done; although most of us are in the habit of returning our own trays, we don’t necessarily clean up our tables.

As a result, water stains and food residues are often left behind.

While some diners can shrug it off, or even use their own tissues to clean up the mess, there is definitely room for improvement.

Nonetheless, it has to be said that with more diners automatically returning their own trays, while the cleaners deal with the stray ones, the number of scavenging birds have visibly decreased.

Not Enough Hands, Not Enough Time

Although the diners are now returning their own trays, interviewed cleaners revealed that their workload has barely changed.

They are responsible for different sections too: some are in charge of wiping the tables, while others stand in front of the return station, throwing away food scraps into the trashcan and sorting the dishes before returning them to their respective stalls.

However, Saturdays and Sundays are still tough; they only have two hands each so it’s hard to cope with the sharp influx of diners.

The cleaners have also received feedback that they are too slow when it comes to cleaning the tables.

With regards to this, Mr Liu revealed that the hawker centre is still facing manpower shortages, and he hopes that he can recruit more cleaners in the future.