PREMIER AT MEETING WITH MEDIA

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ On Thursday, ongoing hospital construction projects and upcoming pay rise were the main issues at the traditional "30 minutes with PM" meeting. Opening his meeting with the media, the Premier N.Altankhuyag mentioned about a recently released comic book that, he presumed, will be a nice investment to the efforts of teaching Mongolian traditions to the youth. The he focused on prominent issues occurring in health sector, and Health Minister Ms N.Udval was present at the meeting. She informed about the ongoing construction projects of hospitals and health centers, "eight out of the 47 projects have ended, twelve are planned to be completed by the end of this year". A project on erecting the Burn Center began a with tender offer of eight billion togrog, but this number has increased to 26 billion during the project implementation, she noted. Responding to this, the PM told to stop such works financed by the state budget, adding that incomplete or half-finished buildings will be sold by auction and mentioned about the under-done building of Intelligence Agency that needs an add of over ten billion to be completed. The Government for reforms will increase salaries for the state servants, but will do it without prior announcement, "because we want it to be a real add to employee's living". He also said the “Coal” project provides some 180 thousand households with cheap coals as another action done by his Government to save subsistence money of families. The Premier said that from now, the hospitals will appoint their heads themselves like an independent body, instead of accepting management chosen by the Health Minister. PM also commented a behavior of the Transport Minister A.Gansukh. The latter had recently wanted the parliament Standing committee on state budget to approve his Ministry's budget for 2014. "Submitting a single ministry's budget apart from others is unacceptable at all," the PM stressed, and said that related officials have been obliged to make the Minister responsible for this misconduct.