Bulgaria's cabinet decided on Wednesday to allocate an additional BGN 500 000 for the wage hikes, which have been recently demanded by social workers.

The increase is retrospective and makes up for an earlier lapse, according to deputy finance minister Kiril Ananiev.

This year's budget stipulates that each institution should have restructured their expenditures and use the freed funds for wages, but not every one of them did so, he went on to add.

Around 100 social workers staged a protest on Tuesday in front of the Labour Ministry to ask for a 20% rise of their salaries.

The employees in the state-run social homes in the whole country did not get even a 10% rise from July 1, Maria Temelkova, chairwoman of the state administration employees trade union said.

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