New Framework for Hiring Foreign Citizens in Mozambique

These days, Mozambique has become one of the attractions and recommended destinations for investment, given the discovery of many natural resources which requires skilled labour, therefore leading to the increase in the foreign labour hiring flow.

As a result, there is seen a significant increase in the ratio of foreigners hired to work in Mozambique.

In this light, the Government of Mozambique with a view to respond to the new demands of economic and social development of the country adopted the Decree 37/2016 of 31 August introducing significant changes to Decree 55/2008 of 30 December, such as:

• Under no. 3 of art. 2 of the Decree in force, private employment agencies can hire foreign citizens only for the company’s effective staff, and cannot hire them for job placement or secondment;
• Pursuant to no. 2 of art. 5 of the Decree under review, the short-term employment contract system is subject to payment of a rate;
• Under the quota system, when submitting the employees’ list is mandatory to indicate the nationality thereof;
• According to the laid down in lines e) and g) of the no.1 of art.10 of the Decree under review, the hiring rate increased from 3 (three) to 5 (five) minimum wages in force in the hiring company sector;
• Still under this system, in regard to the response as to compliance of the communication, what was to be immediate will cease to be with the entry into force of this Decree (37/2016), being the entity that oversees this matter forced to provide a response in a term of 5 business days.

Still as requirement arising from this Decree, there is to highlight the laid down in line c) of no.1 of art.10 –“the requirement of foreign citizens to enclose to the documents the Educational Certificate or the Certificate of Technical and Professional qualifications together with equivalence certificate issued by an entity which oversees the area of education in regard to the certificates obtained abroad or document with evidence of experience”.

The requirement above comprises also foreign citizens hired under Project Investment, which shall in turns wait for the response of the Ministry of Labour in a term of 5 business days under art.5 ex.vi art 11 of the above Decree.

Indeed, all these changes though in the view of the supervisory body are necessary and useful to ensure the quality of labour to hire, these entail constraints for companies wishing to hire citizens with foreign nationality, since mischaracterize what was sought to institute when addressing these matters.

What does it mean that, due to the lack of coordination between institutions in the context of hiring in practice, we the need to attest the documents listed herein.

In most cases there will be non-compliance with the legal provisions by the labor authorities, and it will take more than 15 calendar days to issue a favorable or unappealable order.

In the light of the aforementioned, it is clear that the current system or framework in addition to increasing the pressure on the entity that oversees these matters, is not in line with the companies’ and / or investors’ intentions, thus representing a barrier to the hiring of foreign labor. As in fact there is a risk to not comply with the detailed terms of the law, thus breaching the presumption of the rapid processing of the matters.

Leonice Mutepua

Lawyer