A survey says the free meals often miss the children who need them most

In early August the National Nutrition Agency (BGN) confirmed something people had been saying quietly for months: hundreds of private schools, many of them expensive ones in Jakarta and the rest of Java, told the government they did not need the free meals. That admission started a "refocusing" that could take as many as eight million people off the list. Writing for Fulcrum, the site run by Singapore's ISEAS institute, pollster Burhanuddin Muhtadi argues this points to a flaw the programme has carried since it began: the food goes where it is cheapest to deliver, not where hunger is worst.

His numbers come from an Indikator Politik survey of 3,700 people in mid-July. Coverage has grown fast, with 58.2 per cent of households reporting a child who gets the meals, up from 13.7 per cent in March 2025. The spread is what troubles him. In Banten, one of the better-off provinces, 80 per cent of households said their child was fed; in Maluku and Papua the figure was around 22 per cent. Money is the likely reason, he writes: kitchens in remote places cost more to run and earn thinner margins, so operators stay near good roads unless the government makes them go further. About 31 per cent of families who said they needed the help had never received a meal, while 52.7 per cent of those who said they did not need it were getting one.

Then there is the waste. Among households with a child receiving meals, 41.7 per cent said the child often or very often left the food or threw it away, and richer families waste the most. Muhtadi thinks quality explains part of it too, given the food poisoning cases and the temptation for kitchen operators to trim ingredients. His suggestion is plain: use the social data the state already holds to move kitchens toward need, instead of waiting for elite schools to opt out one by one.

Why it matters

If you live in eastern Indonesia or in a village far from a main road, this survey says the odds are against your child being fed by a programme your taxes pay for. Watch what the refocusing actually does over the next few months: whether the eight million places are moved east and into the countryside, or simply cut to save money. The difference decides whether one of the world's biggest school meal schemes feeds hungry children or mostly feeds the ones who were never hungry.