Indonesia stops free meals programme during school holidays, weekends to cut costs

JAKARTA – Indonesia’s National Nutrition Agency (BGN) has stopped distributing free nutritious meals during school breaks and weekends as part of the government’s austerity drive, after the policy drew criticism for encouraging wasteful spending.

Previously, the free meals programme operated six days a week even though most schools only run on a five-day schedule. Under the new policy, the BGN has reduced distribution to five days a week to align with school operating days in most regions.

The agency has also ended meal distribution during school holidays and public breaks, when kitchens previously handed out packaged food for students to take home.

“The concept is that free nutritious meals are provided when students are at school. So if they are on school breaks or engaged in activities outside, the meals will not be distributed,” BGN deputy head Sony Sonjaya said in a statement earlier this week.

The measure forms part of the government’s broader budget efficiency policy, with the programme’s 2026 allocation cut from 335 trillion rupiah (S$24.04 billion) to 268 trillion rupiah.

The measures were aimed at creating a fiscal buffer against external pressures amid rising global energy prices fuelled by geopolitical tensions following the US-Israel war on Iran.

Supporting the measure, economist Nailul Huda of the Center of Economic and Law Studies said meal distribution during school breaks had been “poorly targeted and created unnecessary spending”.

Suspending the distribution for just three weeks, he said, could save up to 20 trillion rupiah. Still, he warned the cut might not be enough if the government wanted to keep the state budget deficit below the legal ceiling of 3 per cent of GDP amid rising energy costs.

“We appreciate this efficiency measure, but it is still not enough to cover the widening budget deficit caused by the free meals programme,” Mr Nailul said on May 28.

The programme previously came under fire in December after the BGN continued distributing meals during school holidays shortly after deadly floods and landslides struck northern Sumatra.

Critics and lawmakers argued at the time that the programme could have been temporarily halted, so part of its budget can be redirected toward disaster response efforts.

During the Idul Fitri holiday in March, the BGN halted meal distribution until students returned to school.

The programme has also faced mounting scrutiny over food safety, governance and alleged procurement irregularities.

More than 37,000 food poisoning cases linked to the programme had been reported as of mid-May, while thousands of kitchens were found to lack mandatory hygiene certification and proper waste management systems.

Assessment system

To improve oversight, the BGN has introduced a mobile application called Reviu MBG (Free Nutritious Meal Review), allowing teachers and health workers overseeing distribution at schools and community health posts to assess meal quality and delivery timeliness in real time.

“With this assessment system, we hope awareness among [free meal kitchens] will improve so incidents linked to the program do not recur,” Mr Sony said.

However, reports submitted through the app will not yet serve as the basis for sanctions.

While Reviu MBG is only accessible to officials involved in monitoring, Mr Sony said a separate public dashboard would soon be launched.

But Mr Nailul argued that an “internal review” system inaccessible to the public would not be effective, saying meaningful oversight required independent monitoring by parties with no stake in the programme.

Public monitoring efforts have already emerged since October, when civil society groups launched the Free Nutritious Meal Watch platform, allowing people to report incidents related to the flagship programme of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

As the time of writing, the platform had received 2,721 reports. THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK