Head of Food Resilience of the Ministry of Agriculture Achmad Suryana said here on Thursday that his side was studying the utilization of non-rice food stuff, or local foods to be included in its raskin program.
The government has in recent years launched the raskin program where it provided low priced rice to target poor families throughout Indonesia.
Now the government is considering including local foods like cassava, maize, sago and tuber that have become the staples of the local people in its raskin program, or food for the poor (pangkin) instead of rice for the poor (raskin).
Achmad said his side hope the study would have been completed and to be reported to the offices of the chief economic minister and the people`s welfare minister this very year.
"We hope that, if approved, this program would have been launched next year," Achmad said.
In the first stage, pangkin will not totally include local foods like maize or cassava but it will be mixed with rice.
So far, the raskin package is given in the form of 15 kg rice per month but the pangkin one would consist of 10 kg rice and 5 kg local foods, he said.
In the second year the composition would be local foods 10 kg and rice 5 kg and for the following years on the composition will totally comprise local foods.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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