Bangladesh has set up a panel to raise the minimum wage for millions of garment workers, a minister said Sunday, as tens of thousands protested over poor conditions highlighted by a series of disasters.

“We’ve set up a minimum wage board for the garment sector. We did it in view of the workers’ demand to hike their salaries,” textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique told AFP.

A typical Bangladeshi garment worker takes home less than $40 a month, a wage that Pope Francis has condemned as akin to slave labour. Their minimum wage was last raised — by 80 percent — in November 2010.

The panel will include union representatives as well as factory owners, Siddique added. “There is no doubt the salaries will be hiked,” he said.