Government Affirms No New Free Nutritious Meal Kitchens During Restructuring Period
The Coordinating Minister for Food, Zulkifli Hasan, has emphasised that there will be no new kitchen operations for the Free Nutritious Meal (MBG) programme during the current governance restructuring period.
“This restructuring involves no new additions for now. We are focusing on arrangement. We are currently tidying up our internal processes,” said Zulhas, as he is affectionately known, during a press conference regarding the Improvement of MBG Service Quality and Remote SPPG held at the Coordinating Ministry for Food Office, Jakarta, on Thursday.
Zulhas stated that over the next month, the government will focus on addressing various findings to ensure the programme can operate as intended.
Within this month, Zulhas is committed to reorganising and fixing Nutrition Fulfillment Service Unit (SPPG) points that were previously subject to unauthorised trading, mapping MBG recipient schools, improving kitchen quality, and verifying reports regarding MBG beneficiaries.
Zulhas revealed that there has been an inflation of 6,877 SPPG points, which could lead to potential waste of approximately Rp12 trillion per year.
“The initial plan was for 21,000 points, but there are now 27,877 points. There has been an increase of 6,877 points,” said Zulhas.
Furthermore, there has been an inflation of SPPG points in frontier, outermost, and least developed (3T) regions, rising from an initial target of 2,000 to 8,617 points.
“A thorough restructuring by the Head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN) and the new management is necessary to fix this vital programme,” added Zulhas.
The Head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), Nanik S. Deyang, stated that the agency is taking several budget efficiency measures to ensure the programme’s implementation does not burden state finances, without altering the nutritional targets for beneficiaries.
The first step taken is a moratorium on the opening of new service points and kitchens. Currently, there are 27,877 operational kitchen points based on virtual accounts, which will be reassessed to determine the suitability of service capacity relative to the number of beneficiaries in each region.
She added that the BGN has also temporarily halted the registration of new kitchens while mapping needs across various regions. This restructuring is being conducted because the distribution of kitchens is still heavily concentrated on Java.
The next step involves refocusing beneficiaries so that nutritional interventions are more precisely directed towards groups in genuine need. An evaluation is being conducted on the current number of beneficiaries, which is recorded at approximately 63 million people.