Indonesia yesterday launched an ambitious US$4.3 billion free-meal program to combat stunted growth due to malnutrition, a key election promise of President Prabowo Subianto.
Prabowo has pledged to provide nutritious meals free to tens of millions of schoolchildren and pregnant women, saying it would improve their quality of life and boost economic growth.
“This is historic for Indonesia for the first time conducting a nationwide nutrition program for toddlers, students, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers,” presidential spokesman Hasan Nasbi said late on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
At least 190 kitchens run by third-party catering services opened nationwide, including some run by military bases, and were busy preparing meals from midnight before distributing them to schoolchildren and pregnant women.
Second-grader Khalifa Eldrian beamed after finishing his free lunch of rice, chicken, vegetables and a banana at an elementary school in East Jakarta.
“I’m happy because the food was delicious... I can concentrate more when studying,” he said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The government has allocated 10,000 rupiah (US$0.62) per meal and has a budget of 71 trillion rupiah for the 2025 fiscal year. It is set to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029.
Stunting affects 21.5 percent of children in the archipelago of about 282 million people. The nation aims to reduce the rate to 5 percent by 2045.
Staff in a kitchen in Bogor, West Java, had worked tirelessly since just after midnight.
“We serve different menus every day, it has to be different so children won’t get bored,” staff member Ayu Pertiwi said.
Ayu said they were serving fairly nutritious meals such as eggs and fish even with the limited budget, although meat would likely only be served twice a month.
“We can still create various menus, but the options are limited. For us, the most important thing is the meal is nutritious,” she said.
The program was met with skepticism from experts when it was first announced during last year’s election campaign.
Tan Shot Yen, a Jakarta-based nutritionist and doctor, said trials late last year were mostly conducted in urban centers and assessments were not made available to the public.
She said the government needed transparent monitoring and robust food safety management to prevent hazards and the inclusion of unhealthy processed products, such as instant noodles and sausages.
“I hope this program is not just a temporary charitable effort to fulfill political promises,” she said. “To continue it for the long term, the government should focus not only on funding, but also on empowering communities so [recipients] are not simply reliant on free meals once a day while struggling to find food for the other two meals,” she said.
Analysts have said the scheme is not sustainable in the long term.
“I am quite pessimistic if everything is shouldered by the central government. Economically, it’s not sustainable,” said Aditya Alta, a public policy analyst from the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies think tank.
“Stunting is a multidimensional issue and addressing it through just one approach is insufficient,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS