Poly & ITE Grads Can Train to be Hawkers With Allowance of Up to $1,000 Per Month

Always dreamt of becoming a hawker since you ate that plate of char kway teow from the coffee shop near you?

Feel like cooking at hawker centres but don’t know how to go about it?

Read all about the recent news about young hawkers and wish you could be as inspiring as them?

Well, if you find yourself nodding to all three questions above like Jigglypuffs, I’ve got some good news for you.

You can now get training, and allowance while training, to be a true-blue Singapore hawker.

Here’s what you need to know.

Poly & ITE Grads Can Train to be Hawkers With Allowance of Up to $1,000

A new hawker training programme aimed to get young people into the hawker trade will be launched in Singapore in March this year.

Called the Work-Study Post-Diploma (Certificate in Hawkerpreneurship), it’s the first of its kind under the SkillsFuture programme.

Temasek Polytechnic will be working together with SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and the National Environment Agency (NEA) to launch it under the Hawkers’ Development Programme (HDP).

The Programme

The programme is open to all recent graduates from polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).

A 12-month programme, the first two months consist of classroom work.

The students will then go on a four-month apprenticeship, then a six-month mentorship with experienced hawkers.

There’ll be about 50 slots available over three years (limited, yes?) and both mentors and apprentices will receive monthly allowances.

Mentors will receive S$500 per month while apprentices get S$1,000 per month.

Singapore Hawker Culture Will Not Die

Unlike a few years back, where the Singapore hawker culture was thought of as a dying trade, the hawker scene today couldn’t have been any more different.

According to the Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and Environment, Amy Khor, there could be more people aspiring to join the hawker trade:

“With the increasing recognition and appreciation of hawker fare, setting up a hawker stall can be considered as a gateway into the F&B sector, and there could be budding food and beverage entrepreneurs who may aspire to join the hawker trade.”

About 170 people have completed the training stage of the HDP as of 1 Jan 2021, and 41 of them are preparing to set up their incubation stalls.

Over the next two years, the number of spaces offered by HDP will increase from 100 to 300 due to the “encouraging response”, Ms Khor said.

The Incubation Stall Programme (ISP), which provides incubation stalls at subsidised rents to aspiring hawkerpreneurs, will also increase the number of stalls available from 20 to 80, she added.

Other than training people into entering the trade, existing hawkers are not left alone either, with support to help them digitalise and keep up with the times.

“To keep our hawker culture thriving, we cannot just do the same things (in) the same way. We need to adapt to change and do the same things in different ways, which is borne out by our experience with the Covid-19 pandemic.”

For those looking to enter the hawker trade, this is probably the best time to do so.

After all, with the Singapore Hawker Culture entering the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Assets list, the Singapore Government has to support and maintain the hawker scene in Singapore, or have all of their hard work go to waste by being taken off the list.

Feature Image: 2p2play / Shutterstock.com