JAKARTA: Indonesian families whose children were offered free school meals are joining non-profit groups calling for the flagship government program to be suspended after thousands of students fell ill from the food.
Cases of food poisoning spiked last week in West Bandung, a district of Java island, when more than 1,300 children were rushed to health clinics after suffering from breathing difficulties, nausea and diarrhea, local media reported.
President Prabowo Subianto’s initiative was touted as a way to tackle a child nutrition crisis but the government has instead had to suspend dozens of production kitchens.
“This program should be stopped and replaced with cash,” said 50-year-old grandmother Aminah, who goes by one name and whose seven-year-old grandson got sick after a free meal.
“I’d rather the kids bring their own lunch from home.”
The disastrous rollout comes as Prabowo is working to move on from violent anti-government protests fueled by deep inequality in Indonesia, where stunting spurred by malnutrition affects more than 20 percent of children.
But nine months after the program began, food poisoning cases have affected thousands of people, prompting mounting calls from non-profit groups for a temporary halt to the multi-billion-dollar scheme.
In West Bandung, students wailed in pain as they were hooked up to oxygen tanks in a temporary health clinic set up by local government to handle the surge in food poisonings, an AFP journalist saw.
The National Nutrition Agency (BGN), which is responsible for the initiative, reported 70 food poisoning incidents since the program began in January until late September.
More than 6,400 people are affected, the agency said in an update on Wednesday.
The reported cases were the “tip of the iceberg,” said Diah Satyani Saminarsih, founder of the non-profit Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives.
“The actual number of cases could be higher because the government has not yet provided a publicly available reporting dashboard,” Diah said.
Part of the problem was the government’s rapid expansion of the program, she added.
Rapid expansion
The government initially aimed to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029, including students, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, but now says the target will be reached by the end of 2025.
The nutrition agency expanded the number of production kitchens from around 1,000 in April to more than 9,600 by late September.
The number of beneficiaries grew from three million to 31 million over the same period.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadan Hindayana, chair of the nutrition agency, said in a statement on Sunday that most of the cases occurred in newly operating kitchens where cooks lacked experience.
The food poisoning incidents were also caused by the quality of raw materials, water and violations of operational standards, he said.
Prabowo’s administration has allocated 62 cents per meal and set a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.2 billion) for 2025.
Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said last week that the government had prepared an additional budget of 28 trillion rupiah requested by the agency, local media reported.
Prabowo defended the program in a televised speech on Monday, saying cases of food poisoning incidents were long a small percentage of the number of meals served.
“We calculated from all the food that went out, the deviation, or shortcoming or error is 0.00017 percent,” he said.
He added that all kitchens involved in the program were ordered to test foods before distribution.
Calls for suspension
It was “very urgent” for the program to be suspended given the number of people who fell ill, said Izzudin Al Farras, a researcher at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance.
Ubaid Matraji, a researcher at the Network for Education Watch, said the program should be suspended before matters worsen.
“We stress that we will no longer wait until we have thousands more victims — we cannot let death happen,” he said.
The nutrition agency suspended 56 kitchens allegedly responsible for “food safety incidents,” it said in a statement Monday.
Nanik S. Deyang, the agency’s deputy chair, said the suspension was part of a “comprehensive evaluation” to prevent similar incidents from recurring.
“The safety of the people, especially children who receive the free nutritious meals, is our top priority,” she said.
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Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened
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Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened
- Indonesian families whose children were offered free school meals are joining non-profit groups calling for the flagship government program to be suspended after thousands of students fell ill
DR Congo’s amputees bear scars of years of conflict
GOMA: They survived the bombs and bullets, but many lost an arm or a leg when M23 fighters seized the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo nearly a year ago.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
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