The nation’s top human rights body urged police to investigate several new outbreaks of food poisoning linked to President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship programme to provide free meals to students, which made 2,000 people sick this week.
In separate cases across at least three major Indonesian islands, more than 2,000 students and teachers fell ill after eating lunch issued by the government as part of a scheme to eradicate malnutrition launched by Prabowo last year.
“Rights to food, especially safe-to-consume food, are human rights,” the Indonesian independent rights body known as Komnas HAM said in a statement.
“Without a rigorous sanitation standard ... the nutrition intervention that the state is doing will lose its moral legitimacy,” it said yesterday.
Komnas HAM called on the police to launch a probe into the poisoning cases.
The rights group also called on the National Nutrition Agency, which oversees the programme, to suspend the kitchens allegedly responsible for the poisoning outbreaks.
Some 170 students and teachers in the South Sulawesi region of Tana Toraja also fell ill after eating the free meals on Thursday, local government head Zadrak Tombeg said, following more than 1,700 cases spread across the provinces of Central Java, East Java, and West Sumatra.
Another 256 students in an East Java region also fell sick after consuming the meals this week, news website CNN Indonesia reported yesterday.
The overseeing agency was slated to hold a press conference yesterday, but delayed it without providing a reason or a rescheduled time.
As of Sept 1, 50,000 individuals had been affected by food poisoning, lawmaker Charles Honoris said on Wednesday, citing health department data, with some previous cases blamed on improper food storage and the late delivery of cooked meals. — Reuters
