It has been a week since Mongolian nurses began their sit-down protest on Sukhbaatar Square, in the centre of Ulaanbaatar. Earlier today, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Policy, Education, Culture and Science discussed the demands which the Mongolian Health Workers’ Union (HWU) had presented for increasing the monthly salary of nurses by no less than 50 percent.

At the meeting, Health Minister D.Sarangerel said ‘the government needs to increase the wage-fund of the Ministry of Health by MNT 73 billion annually. We can then efficiently coordinate health workers’ wages. But it will be ineffective to increase the monthly salaries by 5-10 percent. The Ministry of Health cannot solve this problem on its own.’

In Mongolia today, there are an estimated 11,357 nurses and 9,563 doctors providing healthcare; the average monthly salary of doctors is between MNT 558,000 to MNT 634,000, while nurses get a salary of MNT 405,000 to 471,000. According to the HWU there has not been a single pay rise since 2014,