The standard of local hawker food has gone downhill esp in last few years due to the cheap availability of foreign workers. Askmelah notices many food court stall owners conveniently “outsourced” their trades to cheap China workers. With the low pay and lack of passion and understanding of local food, the food just tastes horrible. Askmelah has since boycott those stalls that hire only foreign workers without the supervision of a local person. So I fully support the Penang’s move to ban foreign workers in local hawker stalls as the main cook (hiring them as helper is another story altogether). A similar law should be enacted in Singapore to protect our food heritage.
Related links:
Penang to ban foreign cooks to preserve ‘local’ food heritage
Source: The Sunday Times 13 Jul 2013
GEORGE TOWN – Penang is set to implement a ban on foreign workers working as the main cook in the hawker food business in order to protect the state’s food heritage.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said hawker licences were only given to locals but the local council had found out that there were a few hawkers who employed foreigners as their main cooks, according to Bernama news agency.
It quoted Lim as saying the local council was currently gathering feedback from the public relating to the matter, adding that the implementation could take place as soon as early next year,
“We are considering revoking their hawker licences if they are found to engage foreigners to work as their main cook but we need to get public feedback before we proceed with the implementation,” he told reporters on Saturday.
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