Menag asks for acceleration of the MBG program for Pondok Pesantren students

Minister of Religion (Menag) Nasaruddin Umar/ANTARA/Sean Filo Muhamad/aa.

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Religion has asked for acceleration to accelerate the expansion of the Free Nutritious Meal (MBG) program for students of pesantren, madrasah, and other religious education institutions in Indonesia.

Minister of Religion Nasaruddin Umar in a press conference after a limited meeting discussing the Improvement of MBG Governance said that pondok pesantren students, in particular, also need it, but the number of those who have benefited from the program so far is still very minimal.

"This pesantren can be said to be the most in need of touch, but it turns out that only one percent can be touched by this program," said the Minister of Religion as quoted by ANTARA, Wednesday, July 29.

Nasaruddin said he was optimistic that with the support of relevant ministries/institutions, the challenges that exist could be overcome and accelerate the completion of this nutritional fulfillment.

The Minister of Religion emphasized that this belief was also embedded in the new National Nutrition Agency (BGN) leadership structure which has been moving quickly in recent days with the main focus on coordinating data on beneficiaries.

The Ministry of Religion considers the integrated data collection, starting from the number of target students who receive benefits and the zoning of the area where they are spread, is the most important and still a challenge behind the achievement of the MBG program in the religious education environment.

Kemenag data itself records the number of students in Indonesia currently there are more than 6.2 million people spread across 42 thousand pesantren education institutions.

"And thus, if our data are accurate, then I think it is very easy for us to solve the problem," he said, while ensuring that the Ministry of Religion would be proactive in facilitating cooperation between BGN and all networks of pesantren and madrasah to pursue the target of nutritional fulfillment for students.