Free Lunch Program Don't Take BOS Funds

Two students brought a place filled with food during the simulation of the free lunch program at SMP Negeri 2 Curug, Tangerang Regency, Banten, Thursday (29/2/2024). (Between/Sulthony Hasanuddin/foc

JAKARTA The free lunch program, which became the main ideas of presidential and vice presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka, has begun to be tested. It is SMP Negeri 2 Curug, Tangerang Regency, which is the pilot project of this program.

Thursday (29/2/2024) Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartanto was also present in the simulation of the free lunch program initiated by the Tangerang Regency government.

The Tangerang Regency Government, through the Tangerang Regency Education Office, provides around 160 lunch portions distributed to students from four classes. There are four menus given in the simulation, namely chicken rice, egg lamb rice, gado-gado, and simomy.

In the midst of his visit to SMP Negeri 2 Curug, Airlangga denied that this was a simulation of the lunch program offered by Prabowo-Gibran even though both had a number of similarities, including a budget of IDR 15 thousand per share as the Golkar politician once said.

Airlangga said, this free lunch simulation was actually carried out voluntarily by the Tangerang Regency government and he came as an invitation.

"Trials to try this free lunchvolunteer, the government opens a model of who wants to make this volleyball," said Airlangga to the media crew.

The free lunch and milk program that has become Prabowo-Gibran's mainstay since the campaign has caused pros and cons. And, it happened until now. However, the couple from the Advanced Indonesia Coalition is unmoved. This program must run in order to improve the nutritional quality of school children and move the national economy," he said.

Childhood is a golden period and is best for growth and development. However, these times are also vulnerable to the threat of various diseases, such as malnutrition," Prabowo said as quoted from a written statement, Tuesday (2/1/2024).

The program has even reportedly been discussed in President Joko Widodo's cabinet meeting on Monday (26/2/2024). The meeting discussed fiscal assumptions and budget planning for 2025.

Even though this was dismissed by Jokowi. The former governor of DKI Jakarta denied that in the meeting he specifically discussed Prabowo-Gibran's free lunch program, which had a great opportunity to become a succession after receiving 58 percent of the votes for the 2024 presidential election based on the General Election Commission (KPU) official count until Friday, February 1, 2024.

The implementation until the budget to realize free lunch is still a matter of debate until now. From the budget series, it is feared that the free lunch program will burden the state budget. In addition, Executive Director of the Center of Economics and Law Studies (Celios) Bhima Yudhistira assesses that the implementation of free lunch will trigger a very large demand for food ingredients. The mention of food between the general public and the government will trigger inflation.

"Rice, cooking oil, meat, eggs, basic necessities and others will be a fight," said Bhima.

Therefore, Bhima assessed that the government needs to prepare the availability of staple foodstuffs in the country before carrying out this program. According to him, so far many Indonesian foodstuffs are still imported.

"So a lot of food ingredients are actually because the domestic stock is not ready, this will trigger an increase in prices. When that happens, food prices can be very high," he said.

Not to mention the warning from the World Bank to Indonesia to be careful of the budget deficit threshold if it realizes the program.

On one occasion, Airlangga said, the free lunch program would be financed from the Specific School Operational Assistance (BOS) or BOS Affirmation specifically providing lunch for students.

The free lunch program is also in the spotlight of the Education and Teacher Association (P2G), which demands that the government provide a detailed explanation to the public. In addition, P2G also hopes that this program does not take the APBN budget for education or BOS as stated by Airlangga.

"First, it must be explained correctly to the public, educational stakeholder entities, namely teachers and parents, what is the urgency? Because there are various interpretations in the public," said P2G National Coordinator, Satriwan Salim to VOI.

Satriwan explained, the free lunch program is actually not unusual because this program also applies in developed countries. He gave the example of the United States, Finland, Japan, France, and even Britain also have similar programs.

"Real things do exist. But it must be explained to the public, for example, where does the budget come from? Don't take 20 percent of education from the state budget or BOS funds for free lunch," said Satriwan again.

"BoS funds are already small, if they are reduced again, the smaller the value, the lower the value for our children," he added.