He informed that to control the quality of food provided to students, nutritionists assigned to nutrition fulfillment service units (SPPG) or kitchens have been tasked with conducting tests before the food is sent to schools.
"That is among the assignments that nutritionists must do. We require a nutritionist assigned to the service unit to control the quality of the food," he said here on Friday.
He emphasized that the presence of nutritionists at all service units is an obligation to ensure that the quality control process runs well.
Commenting on the case of uncooked food being found in a free meals menu box at an elementary school in East Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara, Hindayana said that the incident involves a service unit that has just started supplying meals for the program.
Giving an example, he said that during the trial phase of the program, it took up to three months for many service units to cook meals for 3 thousand people with consistent taste and doneness.
Therefore, he added, the BGN is currently implementing an operational standard that requires new service units to start with providing a small number of meal portions first.
"So, they must start from 150 (portions), increase to 500 (portions), increase to 1 thousand (portions), then increase to 1,500 (portions) to train them to get used to (providing many portions of meals)," he informed.
He emphasized that the BGN will carry out an evaluation to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
"An evaluation must be carried out so this kind of incident does not happen again. The quality of the food must be maintained so the beneficiaries are not harmed," he said.
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Translator: Fathur Rochman, Yashinta Difa
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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