Ni Made Tasyarani, Jakarta – Pabowo Subianto's free nutritious meal program, which was initially designed to provide lunch to students, will now provide two daily meals at schools nationwide, the president-elect's top advisor Hashim Djojohadikusumo has said.

"This is not a free lunch program, this is a program for free meals twice a day: breakfast and lunch," Hashim said on Monday during an event organized by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin).

He added that the decision to expand the program to two free meals a day was based on Health Ministry data, which showed that 41 percent of students, or 18 million, went without breakfast.

"They are hungry, why? Because their parents cannot afford to provide breakfast, so they go to school hungry," said Hashim.

"Schoolchildren are malnourished, younger siblings who live at home are malnourished, their mothers are also malnourished, and 50,000 children are born with disabilities every year," Hashim added.

This condition was one reason why the country's education lagged far behind that of other countries, he said, as indicated by the low score of Indonesian students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmen (OECD).

"Indonesia is consistently among the worst in the world. We don't need to be [in our current position] for too long, but if I'm not mistaken, [we rank] 63rd out of 70. And we have never moved forward from there," he said.

MSME growth

"We're planning to provide 82 million eggs every day," Hashim continued, reiterating that the full program would cost around Rp 450 trillion [US$28.7 billion] per year once it was rolled out across the country.

The national program aims to provide free meals to around 82 million people per day, including students and pregnant women.

Funding for the program was also expected to drive the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), as well as circulate in the domestic market and make a significant contribution to the economy, he said.

Evolving program

Hashim noted that Prabowo first proposed the free meal program as a solution to curb childhood stunting during his 2006 presidential campaign. At the time, it was meant to target children under 5 years old, as the age group faced a staggering 30 percent stunting rate.

In May, Prabowo announced during a tvOne interview that his trademark program would be rebranded to address child malnourishment and tailor solutions to fit regional "typologies and conditions".

Prabowo said "free nutritious food for children" was a better way to describe the program.

"Free lunch was [a simpler name] but as it turns out, a lot of children go to school from early in the morning and get home by 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., so any lunch would be too late," he told the local broadcaster.

Source: https://asianews.network/prabowos-flagship-program-to-offer-two-school-meals-daily-advisor