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Prabowo's flagship program to offer two school meals daily: Advisor
The president-elect's flagship free meal program has evolved from its initial aim to combat stunting to providing two meals per student per day, a top advisor has said at a Kadin event on Monday.
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Students of Salatiga 1 state junior high school enjoy their lunch on Sept. 12, 2024 as part of a free nutritious meal pilot program in Salatiga, Central Java. (Antara/Aloysius Jarot Nugroho)
P
abowo 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.
Read also: Prabowo to include private school in free meals program: Nutrition body
“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).
