House Suggests Free Nutritious Meals for Teachers, Not Just Distributing Lunchboxes to Students
Deputy Speaker of Commission X of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI), Lalu Hadrian Irfani, has proposed that the Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) programme should not only be provided to students. He suggested that teachers in schools should also receive the meals. He stated that so far, teachers have only been helping to distribute and collect the MBG lunchboxes at schools. Lalu assessed that teachers also deserve to receive MBG as a form of appreciation for assisting with the distribution. “We even propose that teachers are also given MBG. Teachers should not just be distributors handing out lunchboxes to students,” Lalu said at the Parliament Complex in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, 24 June 2026.
Previously, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin proposed that tuberculosis (TB) sufferers be added to the list of MBG programme recipients. Budi revealed he was asked by the Head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), Nanik S Deyang, about priority groups that must receive MBG. He then proposed four groups. “I said there are actually four groups that are vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies from a health perspective,” Budi stated at the Parliament Complex in Central Jakarta on Tuesday, 23 June 2026. “The first is pregnant women, the second is breastfeeding mothers, the third is toddlers under five years old, and the fourth is people suffering from TB,” he added.
He explained that based on research published in international journals, this approach has already been implemented in India and China. “People suffering from TB undergo treatment for 6 to 12 months, during which their physical condition and immune system are weak,” Budi revealed. By receiving adequate nutritional intake, their immune system can be strengthened, helping to accelerate recovery. “And that saves lives because TB is deadly, isn’t it? There are around 126,000 cases annually, so every five minutes, two people in Indonesia die from TB,” Budi explained.