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AKARTA: Administrative Reforms Minister Azwar Abubakar says he wants regional governments to stop making misleading comments about providing people with a so-called free education.

“We should stop using the term ‘free education’. In reality there is actually no such thing,” Azwar said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Saturday.

“Some citizen tax money went to the regional budget. It’s normal if they don’t need to pay anything for education services funded by the budget.”

The law mandates that the central and regional governments allocate 20 percent of their annual budgets for education.

Earlier, Azwar was caught by reporters signing an agreement with the Singaporean government without knowing the content of the documents he had just signed.

Azwar, who oversees bureaucratic reform and has the mandate to improve the performance of the country’s bureaucracy, admitted that he had no time to study the document before signing it. “I will return to you with the answer in two or three days. I have to study it first because I did not go through [the MoU] article by article,” Azwar said.