The Seoul city government is considering expanding the current free lunch program to cover about
half of students from households with lower-than-average income by 2014, city officials said Monday.
The city government had originally planned to provide free school lunches to 30 percent of lower-than-average-income households by 2014 from the current 11 percent. The revised goal came as the city council pushes for expanding the program to cover all students regardless of household income.
Under the proposed plan, the number of beneficiaries from the program will increase to 602,000 from 361,000, city officials said.
There are 1.2 million of elementary, middle and high schoolers from lower-income households.
The move comes as the project of offering free school lunches has become a hot political issue since it was initiated by the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) last year despite strong opposition by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. He described it as an irresponsible populist policy.
The city government is currently reviewing a conservative coalition group's request for a referendum as part of their efforts to block the
free lunch-for-all initiative.
As of last week, about 800,000 residents in Seoul have signed up to hold the referendum, well above the number of signatures needed for such a poll.