The China Mail - Indonesia free meals programme under fire after thousands sickened

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 diarrhoea, 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 programme 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 fuelled by deep inequality in Indonesia, where stunting spurred by malnutrition affects more than 20 percent of children.

But nine months after the programme 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 programme 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 programme, 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 programme 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 programme were ordered to test foods before distribution.

- Calls for suspension -

It was "very urgent" for the programme 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 programme 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.

C.Mak--ThChM