An expert at the National Campaign Team for Presidential and vice presidential candidates pair of Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka reveals that the pair has devised a plan to establish a new coordinating ministry to manage free lunch and milk program if they are officially declared winner of the 2024 presidential election.
Budiman Sudjatmiko, deputy chairman of the Prabowo-Gibran National Campaign Team (TKN) Council of Experts, said the program would be implemented in stages if the pair took office as president and vice president.
However, he explained that the government would need to involve a number of institutions in its implementation, such as the Ministry of Agriculture; the Ministry of Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration; the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises; the Ministry of Health; and the Ministry of Education and Culture. On this basis, he opened up the possibility of creating a new coordinating ministry.
“Prabowo-Gibran plans this program to be built with a collaborative format of stakeholders in the national food industry sector,” Budiman said as quoted by detik.com on Wednesday, February 21, 2024.
“Due to the urgency of the program, and the vision and mission statements of Prabowo-Gibran for the 2024 elections, the issue requires a special approach to be implemented immediately. It is possible that a special coordinating ministry will be established for this program,” he added.
Budiman said further that the new ministry would allow the government to spend effectively from upstream to downstream and at the same time to develop the concept of cooperative farming involving the food industry to meet the needs of this program.
“Villages will be used as the production base for raw materials and food products needed to provide free lunch and milk,” he said.
However, Budiman stressed that the planned establishment of a new coordinating ministry is still under discussion.
“So this is one of the things we have been discussing, but it is not yet final,” he said.
