Gerindra Spokesperson: Free Nutritious Meals Programme Opens Millions of Jobs

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Gerindra Party spokesperson and Deputy Chairman of Commission II of the House of Representatives, Bahtra Banong, stated that the Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) programme is creating millions of jobs for the community. “From MBG alone, it can contribute to the workforce, because if I am not mistaken, each kitchen employs around 50 people at the SPPG. If roughly 50 people are multiplied by 27,000 kitchens, that means there are almost 1.3 million people,” he said in Central Jakarta on Saturday. According to him, these millions of jobs are equivalent to the workforce absorption of factories. He expressed regret that this positive impact has escaped public scrutiny. “We have seen how the management of MBG has been considered chaotic, how the management of MBG has been considered not well-targeted. In fact, there are many benefits that need to be observed by our friends,” he said. Furthermore, he revealed that a survey by the Indonesian Polling Centre (Puspoll) for the period of 18-26 May 2026 recorded that 55.5 percent of respondents support the MBG programme. He added that the survey results show MBG is one of the government programmes whose benefits are most felt by the public. He said these results serve as a good indicator of the Prabowo administration’s performance. “This means it does not align with the massive public framing we see today, that MBG must be stopped, that MBG’s benefits are very small for the wider public. Yet the survey results show that this is actually one of the performance indicators for President Prabowo’s administration,” he stated. The Puspoll Indonesia survey used a sample size of 2,400 respondents with a margin of error of approximately 2 percent and a 95 percent confidence level. Samples were selected randomly using a multistage random sampling method, taking into account urban and rural areas and proportional distribution between the sample size and the number of voters in each province.