Sierra Leone's Ebola burial teams have gone on strike this week, saying they haven't been given the hazard pay they are due.
As the outbreak in West Africa has shown, Ebola is highly infectious. The virus remains active even after a patient has died so risks persist even in death, endangering burial teams as well who come to take corpses away. To compensate for the risk, burial teams are provided with hazard pay.
Unfortunately, burial teams have not received payments on time, prompting the ire of groups handling two districts in Sierra Leone, including Freetown, the country's capital.
"We have decided to stop working until they pay us our weekly risk allowance. They have not been paid for two weeks," said Tamba Nyandemoh.
Madina Rahman, deputy health minister for Sierra Leone, said that all burial teams have been duly paid until the end of September and with only a week's worth of hazard pay owed to the teams. She adds that money has already been released to the banks and all burial teams will be paid later in the week. This doesn't refer to the hazard pay burial teams are asking for but instead their regular wages.
According to Nyandemoh, burial teams are made up of 12 members, each one earning around $100 a week. Since the outbreak has been in full swing, teams have had to bury 17 to 35 bodies every day.
With burial teams on strike, Abdul Rahman Parker, a team supervisor, said that they have been told that dead bodies are piling up around and in Waterloo, an area located south of Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, in the Western Area Rural district.
"But we cannot bury them because we are risking our lives and those in charge are depriving us of our money," he said.
Other members of burial teams pipe in with their sentiments, saying they don't care if dead bodies start littering the city. All they want is their money, a small compensation for being ostracized in their communities for being part of a burial team.
According to the World Health Organization, 7,492 cases of infections have been reported, with 3,439 killed by Ebola mostly in the West African region, as of Oct. 1.
Last week, Sierra Leone recorded 121 new deaths and multitudes of new infections. Burial teams on strike can worsen the outbreak in the country because it creates conditions conducive to contracting the virus.
