TheCable

Ebola burial workers in Kenema, Sierra Leone, have gone on strike, dumping bodies in public over non-payment of allowances for handling Ebola victims.

The undertakers left 15 bodies of Ebola victims in the city’s main hospital, as they embarked on the industrial action.

According to BBC, one of the abandoned bodies was left by the hospital manager’s office and two others by the hospital entrance, to make a clear point.

Sierra Leone is one of the countries worst affected by the 2014 Ebola outbreak, with more than 1,200 deaths.

The aggrieved burial workers said they had not been paid risk allowances as agreed with authorities for the months of October and November.

The hospital’s management and the Sierra Leonean health ministry are yet to comment on the development.

The burial workers’ industrial action comes two weeks after health workers went on strike for similar reasons at a clinic near Bo – the only facility in southern Sierra Leone treating Ebola victims.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, as the viral disease has killed more than 5,400 people in West Africa this year, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Kenema is the third largest city in Sierra Leone and the biggest in the east.