Alpha Kamara

Special for USA TODAY

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Burial teams responsible for collecting the corpses of Ebola victims in Sierra Leone returned to work Wednesday, one day after going on strike because of a delay in receiving hazard pay.

Members of the teams receive $100 a week on top of their regular salary for working under extremely dangerous conditions but say they had not been paid in weeks. The Ebola burial teams are comprised of 600 workers in groups of 12 per team.

Dead bodies were being left in homes and on the streets of the capital Freetown, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation reported.

In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Sierra Leone's deputy health minister, Madina Rahman, said the strike had been "resolved." Later in the day, a team was seen loading bodies outside a government hospital for burial.

"The health ministry is going to investigate the delay in the health workers not receiving their money," Rahman said.

Abass Turay, a member of the burial team in the Waterloo district of Freetown, said, "We have worked for two weeks now without pay. We have the most risky job, burying Ebola dead bodies all the time. It's unacceptable."

Mohamed Samura, who was at the protests, said, "With all the Ebola funds and donations we are hearing about daily on the radio, the government still owes the burial teams money."

The Ebola virus is highly infectious and remains active in the body even after a person dies. A strike by the burial teams could worsen the outbreak that has already killed more than 600 people in Sierra Leone.

In neighboring Liberia, health workers said they planned to strike if their demands for more money and safety equipment were not met by the end of the week. Health workers there are demanding monthly salaries of $700, as well as personal protective equipment, said George Williams, secretary-general of Liberia's National Health Workers Association.

"We give the government up to the weekend to address all these or else we will stop work," Williams said.

In the Aberdeen district of Freetown, local youths blocked a main street Wednesday in protest at a body left on the road for 48 hours — a victim who died of Ebola. Protesters barricaded other parts of the district and said that an emergency Ebola hotline was not being answered.

More than 3,400 people have been killed by the Ebola outbreak across West Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

Contributing: The Associated Press