http://www.soshiok.com/articles/13874
Who's stealing the forks and spoons?
Fri Aug 21 2009
Jovita Chua
The New Paper
In just two months, hawker Wang Chuanguang claims to have lost 300 spoons.
Singapore, August 19, 2009 - IN just two months, hawker Wang Chuanguang claims to have lost 300 spoons.
That's $200 worth of cutlery gone missing, and the 50-year-old owner of Fu Zhou Mei Wei Noodles had to fork out money to replace them.
He's not alone.
Other stallholders at the Chinatown Complex Food Centre claim to have also lost their utensils. Some even decided to switch to disposable ones to prevent further losses.
Is there a thief filching the items?
Hawkers think there may be a simpler explanation.
They said that the cleaners are rotated to work at different areas of the food centre, and as a result, they might be confused about which stalls the utensils belong to.
In other words, some stalls are holding on to cutlery which don't belong to them.
Madam Lee, 40, stallholder of Wang Wang Dumpling, said: 'This place is so big and the cleaners keep changing. How would they be familiar with the stalls and their utensils? That's why some of our bowls and chopsticks end up with other stalls.'
200 stalls
There are more than 200 stalls there, served by 35 cleaners who clear the utensils after customers.
Stallholders pay $60 a week for the cleaners to clear the tables and wash their utensils.
Another stallholder, Mr Zhang Jin Fa, 70, said the problem began about a year ago.
That was when the food centre had just undergone a major renovation.
Mr Zhang had bought 200 bowls for his new stall then. But today, fewer than 80 remain, he claimed.
He has since bought disposable utensils, and uses them with the remaining 80 bowls.
He spends more than $200 a month on disposable utensils now compared to the past when he paid double the price for regular bowls, but which would last him for years.
Mr Wang also switched to disposable utensils seven months ago.
Before that, he tried searching for his lost utensils in the food centre. He claimed to have found some of them marked with his stall number in another stall. Mr Wang said he confronted the stallholder, who denied taking his utensils.
'They told me those utensils belonged to them in the first place, and that I had stolen them and marked them with my stall number,' he said.
Mr Lee Fu Ming, 56, chairman of the Chinatown Complex Food Centre Association (Cooked Food division), said he has received complaints from some stallholders.
Said Mr Lee, who is also in charge of the 35 cleaners: 'It's unavoidable that there are such losses in such a big food centre. I'm sure other places face such a problem as well.
'Our cleaners are rostered. They are allowed one day off after one week's work. Also, there are two shifts per day - from 7am to 3pm and from 3pm to 11pm. So they are always changing, that's why we can't allocate them to a specific area.'
Who's stealing the forks and spoons?
Fri Aug 21 2009
Jovita Chua
The New Paper
In just two months, hawker Wang Chuanguang claims to have lost 300 spoons.
Singapore, August 19, 2009 - IN just two months, hawker Wang Chuanguang claims to have lost 300 spoons.
That's $200 worth of cutlery gone missing, and the 50-year-old owner of Fu Zhou Mei Wei Noodles had to fork out money to replace them.
He's not alone.
Other stallholders at the Chinatown Complex Food Centre claim to have also lost their utensils. Some even decided to switch to disposable ones to prevent further losses.
Is there a thief filching the items?
Hawkers think there may be a simpler explanation.
They said that the cleaners are rotated to work at different areas of the food centre, and as a result, they might be confused about which stalls the utensils belong to.
In other words, some stalls are holding on to cutlery which don't belong to them.
Madam Lee, 40, stallholder of Wang Wang Dumpling, said: 'This place is so big and the cleaners keep changing. How would they be familiar with the stalls and their utensils? That's why some of our bowls and chopsticks end up with other stalls.'
200 stalls
There are more than 200 stalls there, served by 35 cleaners who clear the utensils after customers.
Stallholders pay $60 a week for the cleaners to clear the tables and wash their utensils.
Another stallholder, Mr Zhang Jin Fa, 70, said the problem began about a year ago.
That was when the food centre had just undergone a major renovation.
Mr Zhang had bought 200 bowls for his new stall then. But today, fewer than 80 remain, he claimed.
He has since bought disposable utensils, and uses them with the remaining 80 bowls.
He spends more than $200 a month on disposable utensils now compared to the past when he paid double the price for regular bowls, but which would last him for years.
Mr Wang also switched to disposable utensils seven months ago.
Before that, he tried searching for his lost utensils in the food centre. He claimed to have found some of them marked with his stall number in another stall. Mr Wang said he confronted the stallholder, who denied taking his utensils.
'They told me those utensils belonged to them in the first place, and that I had stolen them and marked them with my stall number,' he said.
Mr Lee Fu Ming, 56, chairman of the Chinatown Complex Food Centre Association (Cooked Food division), said he has received complaints from some stallholders.
Said Mr Lee, who is also in charge of the 35 cleaners: 'It's unavoidable that there are such losses in such a big food centre. I'm sure other places face such a problem as well.
'Our cleaners are rostered. They are allowed one day off after one week's work. Also, there are two shifts per day - from 7am to 3pm and from 3pm to 11pm. So they are always changing, that's why we can't allocate them to a specific area.'
