Hiring in Chad: the contract visa, the contract and ending employment, step by step

Move someone who is already in Chad

A foreign national's contract with a new employer is a new hire, so it needs ONAPE's authorisation and its own visa before work starts. The former employer tells ONAPE that the old contract has ended within fifteen days.

A Chadian national needs no authorisation, though an open-ended contract with them, or a fixed term of more than six months, still carries ONAPE's visa. Their move turns on the notice they give when they resign: 30 days for managers, senior technicians and supervisors, and fifteen days for labourers and first-category workers, unless a collective agreement sets more. The two sides can agree that no notice is owed.

Check the role is open to a non-Chadian

Chad's Labour Code bars an employer from weighing nationality in hiring, pay or promotion, subject to the rules on the condition of foreigners. Those rules come through ONAPE: its authorisation before a foreign hire and its visa on the contract.

ONAPE is the only body allowed to place workers across Chad, and it sets the recruitment of foreign workers with the immigration services. A decree under the Code sets how foreign workers are recruited.

Set the contract up right

A contract can take any form the two sides choose, and can be proved by any means. A written contract is free of stamp and registration duties. A contract to be performed in Chad follows the Labour Code wherever it was signed, and whatever the nationality of the two sides. Besides a foreign worker's contract, ONAPE's visa goes on an open-ended contract, a contract that moves the worker from where they were hired, and a fixed term of more than six months.

A fixed term is written, and runs for up to two years, renewable once. Shorter contracts can be renewed more than once, within two years in all. A fixed term with no set end date is used only for a replacement, a season or campaign, a passing rise in work or an unusual activity. Unless it is a replacement, it states its likely length, of no more than six months. A fixed term carries a trial of a working day for each week, up to fifteen working days, or eight for a replacement. Where the work goes on after the term, the contract becomes open-ended. Where it does not, the employee is owed an end-of-contract indemnity of 5% of the pay and benefits earned under it.

A trial on an open-ended contract is agreed in writing, with its length. With any renewal, it lasts no more than six months for managers, three months for clerical staff, technicians and supervisors, and a month for everyone else.

The legal week is 39 hours outside agriculture. In agriculture, normal hours are no more than 2,400 a year. Hours above the legal week are paid at a higher rate that a decree sets. The employer can require up to 94 hours of overtime a calendar year on its own decision, once it has posted the hours and told the labour inspector. With overtime, the working day reaches no more than 11 hours and the week no more than 54. Night work, whose hours a decree sets, covers at least 22:00 to 05:00. The weekly rest is at least 24 hours in a row, in principle on Sunday.

Know the employee test before you engage a contractor

Chad's Labour Code treats as a worker anyone, whatever their sex or nationality, who has undertaken to put their professional activity under the direction and authority of an employer, for pay. A contract of employment is one by which a worker, legally subordinate to the employer in doing the work, performs it for a wage.

The Code covers every contract to be performed in Chad, wherever it was signed. It also covers work done in Chad now and then under a contract made for another country, except for someone sent on a mission of up to three months.

A role for a foreign national, which needs ONAPE's authorisation and visa, goes through employer of record.

Pay people on the law's timetable

Pay is in legal tender. Monthly pay is paid within eight days of the month's end, with a payslip each time. A worker can ask for an advance of up to 60% of their salary. When a contract ends, the salary and indemnities are paid at once. A claim for unpaid pay can be brought for five years.

Only the deductions the law requires, advances, court attachments and agreed assignments of salary can come off pay. Equal work, or work of equal value, earns equal pay, whatever the worker's origin, nationality, sex or age.

The minimum wages, for work in general and for agriculture, are fixed by agreement between the employers' and the workers' representative organisations. The labour inspectorate checks that they are paid. Social security is through the CNPS, the national social security fund.

Know the leave your people are entitled to

End employment on the law's terms

A dismissal needs an objective and serious reason, which the employer proves. It can lie in the employee, such as their health, fitness, performance or conduct, or in the business, where a post is cut or changed by new technology, reorganisation, economic difficulty or closure.

Before a dismissal for a personal reason, the employer calls the employee to an interview by a letter that gives the date, time, place and reasons. The interview is held no earlier than the third working day after the letter arrives, and the employee can bring a colleague. The decision comes no earlier than the second day after the interview, in a letter giving its reasons. For serious misconduct, the employer can suspend the employee at once, with pay stopped for no more than eight days.

Notice of dismissal is fifteen days in the first year of service, a month from one year and two months from three years. During it, the employee has one day a week off on full pay to look for work. Serious misconduct ends the contract without notice.

After two years' service, a dismissed employee is owed an indemnity, on top of notice and leave pay. For each year, it is a share of the average gross monthly salary of the last twelve months, leaving out family allowances. Any dismissal indemnity paid earlier in the same business comes off it.

Where the employer cannot prove the reason, a court orders an indemnity set by the harm done, on the last gross monthly salary. Where the procedure was not followed, a court orders two months' salary on top.

An economic dismissal goes to the staff delegates in writing, with the posts cut and the names chosen. Those with the least professional ability go first, then the least senior, then those with fewest family responsibilities, then the youngest. The delegates answer within eight days. The file then goes to the labour inspector. Within eight days, the employer and the delegates look for ways to avoid dismissals in front of the inspector, for no more than 30 clear days. Those dismissed keep priority for rehiring in the same job category for one year. They ask for it within a month of the dismissal.

A fixed term ends early, on the employer's side, only for serious misconduct, after the disciplinary procedure. Otherwise the employee is owed the pay for the rest of the term. Where the procedure was not followed, the employee is owed 25% of the pay for the rest of the term, whether or not the misconduct is proved. It comes on top of any pay for the rest of the term that is owed. An agreement to end any contract holds only in writing, signed in front of the labour inspector. A pregnant employee cannot be dismissed, except for serious misconduct unrelated to the pregnancy or where the contract cannot be kept. During the weeks of maternity leave the law allows, no dismissal is possible at all, whether or not she takes the leave. An employee dismissed in breach of that protection is owed a lump sum of twelve months' salary. A work certificate is owed when any contract ends.

See what changed this year, and what is next

No change to the Labour Code took effect in the last twelve months. The Code in force is Loi n° 038/PR/96 of 11 December 1996, and this guide sets out its rules as they stand in October 2026.

Several of its rules are set by decrees under it: overtime rates, night hours, public holidays and the recruitment of foreign workers. A new decree can change any of them without a change to the Code.