Jakarta, IO – Campaign promises to improve the quality of Indonesian human resources were rife during the last election. The free lunch and milk program for students throughout Indonesia should be put under a spotlight, as it is going to require a monumental sum of money to make a reality.
According to calculations by the Indonesia Food Security Review (IFSR), the free lunch program will cost Indonesia USD 30bn or IDR 450tn, assuming an index of USD 1 per meal. The program is predicted to create 1.8 million jobs for kitchen workers who cook and prepare free school meals.
In the early 1990s, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) implemented the Supplementary Food for School Students Program (PMT-AS). At that time, PMT-AS was given to students as local snacks, three times a week. PMT-AS was also predicted to revive the local economy because this program absorbed local foods produced by the community. However, since the regional autonomy era, this supplementary nutrition program was no longer a national program and eventually disappeared.
The implementation of the free lunch and milk program can start with conducting comparative studies in developed countries, to learn about the management, financing and supporting infrastructure (kitchens, canteens and lunch halls in the schools). The food safety issue must also become a point of concern in this colossal program, as it will involve the provision of a full meal. If the kitchen and food storage lacks hygiene, the lurking danger of food poisoning becomes inevitable.
Regarding free milk, the issue that needs to be addressed is the empowerment of dairy farmers. The free milk program creates an exceptionally large milk market. However, if the majority of milk consumed by Indonesians is still imported, local farmers will not benefit much from the free milk program. This program should not benefit dairy farmers from other countries only, as they will definitely rejoice in supplying milk for Indonesia’s free-milk-for-students program.
Therefore, the free meal and milk programs must require several conditions, including a continuous supply of food commodities that are local, and have economic leverage for the people, including livestock breeders and farmers. In the United States, the School Lunch Program has been running since 1946. Although it is not entirely free, less advantaged students receive subsidies by paying lower prices.
When students have to stay at school past lunchtime because academic hours start from 7 AM and extend to 3 PM, school canteens must be able to provide lunches that meet nutritional and health requirements, as well as being affordable, subsidized or free of charge.
To prevent the free lunch program from absorbing massive chunks from the state budget, students who benefit from the program should come from impoverished families. Why? Because people who are vulnerable to malnutrition are those with low socio-economic backgrounds. They cannot afford nutritious food (meat, milk and eggs) for their daily food intake. Meanwhile, more well-off students generally do not have problems obtaining quality meat-based food.
Data from the Social Affairs Ministry regarding low-income families can be used as a reference to qualify students who can benefit from the free lunch program. Human resource development to achieve a more developed Indonesia will be the key to future economic growth. Nutrition and education are the keys to improving human resources. The country cannot forever depend on the wealth generated from natural resources such as coal, oil and gas.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released its 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores. PISA, conducted since 2000, is an assessment carried out for students aged 15 years of age every three years. Based on the rankings, Indonesia’s position in PISA 2022 is better than PISA 2018. However, Indonesia experienced a 12-13 point decline in reading, mathematics and science.
The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have contributed to the dip in PISA scores. Indonesia’s PISA score seems to be stagnant in the last 20 years. What are the educational strategies in our country which will improve students’ academic performance? By the end of the 1960s, the Indonesian Government made a significant breakthrough in education, which was to build Inpres (Presidential Instruction) elementary schools all across the country.
These elementary schools had strategic significance because they succeeded in bringing education services closer to people in urban and rural areas. At the moment, the education policy often promoted by the Government is “Freedom to Learn”, which is a step to transform education to create superior human resources. Freedom to learn means that students have the freedom to think and express themselves. With the Freedom to Learn program, the Government hopes to provide high-quality education for all students, which will eventually improve Indonesia’s human resources.
Indonesia’s human resources competitiveness ranking climbed four levels to 47th in the world, based on the Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Talent Ranking (WTR) 2023 report. Despite experiencing a significant increase, Indonesia’s human resources competitiveness position is still relatively low compared to 2019 or the pre-COVID-19 pandemic, where it placed 41st in the world.
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Human resources quality indicators include capacity (workers’ ability based on literacy and education), deployment (level of worker participation and unemployment rate), development (level of educational participation) and know-how (level of knowledge and ability of workers and availability of resources). The 2017 Global Human Capital Report placed Indonesia in 65th place in terms of human resource quality among 130 countries, much lower than its neighboring countries, such as Singapore (11th), Malaysia (33rd), Thailand (40th) and the Philippines (50th).
Nutrition plays a vital role in developing quality human resources. Therefore, national leaders and people’s representatives in parliament for the next five years should also be aware of the nutritional problems faced by Indonesian children. Nutrition must be raised as a political issue and a success indicator of development. Investments in nutrition are long-term investments; therefore, the impact may not be seen until several decades later.