LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST:
Food trucks are much in the news again for all the wrong reasons. Several have failed and the remaining few are in a parlous state.
Niall Fraser excoriates the government's handing of them, and he's right to do so. ("Food trucks hard to stomach after glory days of street stalls", 1 November0
But what to do now? To abandon the program would punish the remaining trucks, which have invested millions of dollars.
Surely the solution is easy. This is not rocket science! Food trucks are successful in other countries, why not here?
The answer is simple: the dead hand of bureaucrats.
Get them out of the way. Allow the trucks to locate where they want to (with limited exclusion zones). Scrap the requirement for a "back up kitchen". Allow more trucks to operate without the ridiculous tests the first batch had to go through (only a bureaucrat….)
In short: Let market forces bloom.
Get the dead hand of government off the trucks.
And while we're about it: how about letting those wonderful street stalls back in our city? Everyone loves them, residents and visitors alike. Bring back the "glory days"!
