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The next time you chope a table at the hawker centre, say a little prayer for Daniel Wang.
As Public Health Commissioner in 1979, he was responsible for convincing vendors to leave the streets and move to newly built hawker centres.
But Wang found that the uncles kept their streetside habits even after being shifted to covered food centres. They would put dip their fingers into kopi cups and noodle bowls, and even smoke a cigarette while preparing food.
“The people who served drinks liked to wear pyjamas to work, but they also brought their bedroom habits with them, scratching all over their body,” recalled Wang in a 2011 interview with Sheere Ng for Makansutra.com. “You don’t know if they washed their hands after going to the toilet.”
So he “introduced a compulsory course where hawkers can learn the proper way to handle and store food,” according to the report. The rest is history. “Daniel Wang was the key man responsible for some of the cleaner habits we all enjoy and practise today,” writes KF Seetoh writes in his tribute to the man.
Wang died on 17 March. He was 71.
Photo: Makansutra.com
