Nurses and healthcare workers at Zimbabwe’s state-run hospitals have gone on strike for higher pay and improved working conditions, a union official said.

“We don’t know when the strike will end, but the main problem we are having is that there is no dialog with the employer, let alone the salaries are pathetic,” Enock Dongo, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association, said.

With 132% Inflation, Zimbabwe State Workers Scoff at 100% Raise

The union is demanding pay of $540 a month compared with current salaries ranging from 20,000 Zimbabwean dollars ($60) to Z$25,000, he said.

So far the Zimbabwean public servants have rejected an offer for a 100% pay increase from the government of the Southern African nation where inflation surged to 132% last month.

Striking workers held placards and danced outside Zimbabwe’s main hospitals, such as Parirenyatwa in the capital Harare, which is one of the country’s largest referral hospitals, and Sally Mugabe Central Hospital, also in the capital, demanding better salaries. Other complaints included a lack of medication to treat patients at the country’s hospitals.

Zimbabwe Nurses Association Secretary-General Enock Dongo warned lives would be lost if the labour dispute was not resolved quickly.

Zimbabwe’s leader President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from Robert Mugabe in a November 2017 military coup, has struggled to end the economic crisis that started under his predecessor.