KEEP HAWKER FOOD PRICES LOW
The establishment of social enterprise hawker centres will help moderate the cost of eating out (13 new social enterprise hawkers centres by 2027, Aug 27).
The hope is that given the savings from discounts in rent and subsidies for centralised dish-washing services, the hawkers will be able to keep their prices down. To this end, it is important to have some form of price control, otherwise some stall operators may indulge in indiscriminate raising of food prices.
If properly managed, social enterprise hawker centres will be viable entities. Above all, to attain its objectives, it is important to engage people with a sense of social value to operate them.
Jeffrey Law Lee Beng
ENSURING PROTECTION OF MAIDS
I found the response of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in the maid abuse case perplexing (Abusive maid employers barred from hiring again, Aug 20).
The employer was jailed for 11 years for abusing her maid. She was convicted in 2001 for abuse of another maid.
MOM said the employer was allowed a second chance as the wife had suffered a stroke and needed help. I wonder if efforts were made to verify if this was actually true.
Had she been suffering physically, would she have been able to hit the maid with such force that it left the maid permanently scarred?
Were visits made to the house to determine if the employers were treating the maid humanely? In fact, in such cases, more frequent checks should have been conducted.
Doreen Foo
DISPLAY OF PERSONAL DATA
It is common practice for the security staff at condominiums to record a visitor's name, vehicle number, phone number and the unit he is going to on a slip of paper and then to state that it is a requirement that this slip of paper be displayed on the car's dashboard.
Anyone in the carpark can go round collecting such openly-displayed data.
Contact numbers should be recorded on a duplicate copy retained by the security office.
Is the Personal Data Protection Commission and the Security Association of Singapore able to comment whether this practice violates the Personal Data Protection Act and whether it should be tweaked?
David Soh Poh Huat
