Another 777 students and teachers contracted food poisoning in Indonesia’s Central Java after consuming government-issued free meals, a school principal said on Thursday, bringing the total number of people made ill by the scheme to more than 1,700 in just a week.
In separate incidents in three other locations this week, 950 Indonesians had fallen ill as a result of food poisoning linked to the programme, a member of a parliamentary commission overseeing health said.
President Prabowo Subianto launched the multibillion-dollar free meal programme last year to improve nutrition for tens of millions of children, but the costly scheme has been dogged by allegations of corruption, leadership changes and a spate of mass food poisoning outbreaks.
In a senior high school in Lasem, Central Java, 752 students and 25 teachers have been suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting after consuming free meals on Wednesday, said the school’s principal, Juhartutik.
The students in Lasem were given grilled chicken. Before it was distributed, a food taster found that some of it was “slimy”, Juhartutik said.
“The slimy ones had already been set aside … The kitchen operator said the food was cooked at 3am and it was eaten at noon,” she said, adding that most of the victims were sent home.