At today’s session, Deputy Speaker of Mongolian parliament, T.Ayursaikhan was appointed as a Minister of Labor and Social Protection.  T.Ayursaikhan graduated from Dokuz Eylul University with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1999. He studied international economics at Seoul National University. T.Ayursaikhan has  22 years of political experience.

On 28 September, Former Minister of Labor and Social Protection D.Sarangerel removed from her position as a minister after she angered public by her words. In specific, the minister compared the citizens’ lives to foot soles (untouchable or bottoms), saying, “Our ministry calls poor families as ‘soles’ families. They will be trained as hairdressers.”

People fear that Mongolia will soon have only two social classes: the very poor (or “soles” people as D.Sarangerel called it) and the upper class. It’s getting harder and harder to live in the middle class, they say.

Lawyers, for instance, highlight that the fact that the minister discriminated against citizens by calling them “soles” violates the Constitution of Mongolia and shows no sense of human rights. More specifically, Article 14.2 of the Constitution states that no person shall be discriminated against on the basis of ethnic origin, language, race, age, gender, social origin and status, property and assets, employment occupation and official position, religion and conscience, conviction and opinion and education.