Submitted by MONTSAME on

On May 23, health workers continued their sit-down strike outside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative office in Ulaanbaatar.

They submitted some demands to the Government and the Ministry of Health on May 8. They demanded to increase monthly salary of health workers by more than 50 percent by the second quarter of this year, to give state support to the nurses, to improve social security, to increase number of workers so that human resource standards are ensured and to allocate the required expenditure in the 2019 budget, to raise wage incentive of health workers up to 60 percent and to give overtime payment to family health centers’ doctors and staff for working during a flu outbreak.

The protesters have reached agreement with the Ministry of Health on three issues. However, the Government could not come to an agreement with the IMF on raising salaries in 2018. That was the reason for striking outside the IMF office, they said. Prior, the Government and IMF agreed not to increase salaries of civil servants till the end of 2018. Therefore, they demand the Finance Minister and IMF to soften the terms of the agreement and respond it by May 28.

“Only MNT 77 billion is needed to increase our salaries by 50 percent in the second quarter of 2018. We will lose workforce in the sector unless making investment to the employees. It is possible to solve the issue in short time if we try enough” said head of the Mongolian Health Workers’ Trade Union B.Myagmar.

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