What Your Employer Owes You in Tanzania: Leave, Notice and Severance (2026)

Most people in Tanzania find out what their employer owed them on the day they stop working there — which is the worst possible day to be reading it for the first time. The rules are not vague, and they are not a matter of company policy. They are set out in the Employment and Labour Relations Act, the law every private employer in the country works under, and they are more generous than most employees realise.

This guide walks through what that Act actually gives you: your hours, your leave, your notice, and the money that must reach you when the job ends. Every figure below comes from the Act itself.

The short version

If you are employed on a monthly salary and you have been there more than a month, the law gives you at least:

• 45 ordinary hours a week, over no more than six days, and no more than nine hours in a day
• One and a half times your basic wage for every overtime hour
• 28 consecutive days' paid leave for each leave cycle
• 126 days' sick leave a cycle — 63 on full pay, 63 on half pay
• 28 days' written notice before your employer can end the contract
• Seven days' basic wage for every completed year of service as severance, if the employer is the one ending it

Nothing in a contract can push these below the legal floor. A contract can only improve on them.

Your hours, and when they must pay you more

Ordinary working time is capped three ways at once: six days in a week, 45 hours in a week, and nine hours in a day. Your employer may not require or permit you to work more than 12 hours in any single day under any arrangement.

Overtime is work above those ordinary hours. It has to be agreed, it may not exceed 50 overtime hours in any four-week cycle, and it must be paid at not less than one and one-half times your basic wage. That "not less than" matters — it is a floor, not a rate the employer gets to pick.

Three other premiums are easy to miss:

Night work. The Act defines night as the hours after 8pm and before 6am. If you work them, you are owed at least 5% of your basic wage on top, for each hour worked at night. If those hours are also overtime, the 5% is calculated on your overtime rate, not your ordinary one.

Weekly rest. You are entitled to at least 24 hours of rest a week, and at least 12 consecutive hours between finishing one day and starting the next. If you agree to work during your weekly rest period, that work is paid at double your hourly basic wage.

Public holidays. Work on a gazetted public holiday is paid at double your basic wage for each hour worked that day.

There is one arrangement that lawfully removes overtime pay, and it is worth recognising: a written compressed working week agreement, under which you can be required to work up to 12 hours a day, inclusive of any meal interval, without overtime pay — but capped at five days a week, 45 hours a week and ten overtime hours a week. If you are being asked to work twelve-hour days with no overtime and there is no such written agreement, the arrangement is not lawful.

You are also owed a break of at least 60 minutes once you have worked continuously for more than five hours.

Leave: more than most people take

Annual leave is at least 28 consecutive days per leave cycle — a full four weeks. The Act is explicit that any public holiday falling inside your leave counts as part of it rather than extending it.

Several rules around it are routinely got wrong:

• Your leave pay must be paid before the leave starts, not with the following month's salary.
• Your employer decides when you take it, but it must be taken within six months after the end of the leave cycle — or twelve months, but only where you consented and the employer's operational requirements genuinely justify the delay.
• Your employer may not require or permit you to take annual leave in place of any other leave you are entitled to. Sick leave is not to be swallowed by your annual leave.
• If you have not completed a full cycle when you leave, you are paid pro rata at one day's basic wage for every 13 days you worked or were entitled to work.

You do not get paid leave in your first six months of service, with two exceptions: seasonal employees, and anyone who has worked for the same employer more than once in a year where the total period worked exceeds six months.

Sick leave is at least 126 days in a leave cycle — the first 63 days on full wages, the second 63 on half wages. You need a certificate from a registered medical practitioner. Your employer is not obliged to pay twice over: if you are entitled to paid sick leave for the same period under another law, fund or collective agreement, that discharges them.

Maternity leave is at least 84 days on full pay, rising to 100 days for a multiple birth. If the child dies within a year of birth, the employee is entitled to a further 84 days within the same cycle. You must give three months' notice supported by a medical certificate, you may start from four weeks before the expected date of confinement, and you may not work within six weeks of the birth unless a practitioner certifies you fit. On return you are entitled to up to two hours a day to feed your child. The Act obliges an employer to grant paid maternity leave for four terms.

Paternity leave is at least three days paid, taken within seven days of the birth. Separately, there are at least four days' paid leave for the sickness or death of your child, or the death of your spouse, parent, grandparent, grandchild or sibling. Both are annual totals: three days regardless of how many children are born in the cycle, four days regardless of how many of those events occur. An employer may authorise more days for a later event, but those extra days can be without pay.

If your pay is being cut for days you are lawfully entitled to take, read this alongside our guide to understanding your payslip.

What can and cannot come off your pay

Your employer may only deduct from your remuneration where a written law, collective agreement, wage determination, court order or arbitration award requires or permits it — or where you agreed in writing, in respect of a debt.

Where the deduction reimburses the employer for loss or damage, five conditions must all be met: the loss happened in the course of employment and was your fault; the employer put the cause, amount and calculation to you in writing; you were given a reasonable opportunity to challenge it; the amount does not exceed the actual loss; and total deductions under that provision do not exceed one quarter of your remuneration in money.

A deduction failing any one of those is unlawful. So is any arrangement requiring you to acknowledge receipt of more money than you actually received.

Notice: what it is, and when it does not apply

If your contract can be terminated on notice, the minimum period is:

Notice must be in writing, stating the reasons for termination and the date it is given. A contract may set a longer period, but only if the agreed period is of equal duration for both sides — an employer cannot bind you to two months while keeping four days for itself.

Two rules catch employers out. Notice may not be given during any period of leave taken under the Act, and it may not be set to run concurrently with that leave. And instead of having you work the notice, your employer may pay you the remuneration you would have received during it.

Severance pay

Severance is at least seven days' basic wage for each completed year of continuous service, counted up to a maximum of ten years. It is payable where you have completed 12 months' continuous service and the employer terminates the employment.

It is not payable in four situations: a fair termination on grounds of misconduct; where you unreasonably refuse alternative employment offered by that employer or another; where you reach retirement age; and where a contract of service expires or ends by reason of time.

So a worker with eight completed years is owed 56 days' basic wage. A worker with fourteen years is owed 70 days — the count stops at ten years, not at fourteen.

Severance sits on top of everything else. The Act says in terms that paying it does not affect your right to any other amount payable under this or any other written law.

Your final payment, item by item

This is the part worth keeping. On termination — whatever the reason — your employer must pay you:

1. Any remuneration for work done before the termination
2. Any annual leave pay due for leave you had not taken
3. Any annual leave pay accrued during an incomplete leave cycle
4. Any notice pay, where they paid you in lieu of working the notice
5. Any severance pay due
6. Any transport allowance owed, where you were recruited from somewhere else

On top of that, your employer must issue you a prescribed certificate of service. It is not a favour, and you should not have to ask twice for it.

Point six is the one people forget. If your employment ends at a place other than where you were recruited, the employer must either transport you and your personal effects back to the place of recruitment, pay for that transport, or pay you an allowance — and the allowance must be at least the bus fare to the bus station nearest the place of recruitment, plus daily subsistence for any gap between the termination and the journey.

Money arriving in a lump like this is exactly the moment to have a plan for it. Our guides on building an emergency fund and saving on an irregular income are written for this situation.

If you think the termination was unfair

The Act does something strongly in your favour: it puts the burden of proof on the employer. In any proceedings concerning unfair termination, the employer must prove the termination was fair. You do not have to prove it was not.

To discharge that burden the employer has to prove three separate things: that the reason for termination was valid; that the reason was fair, meaning it related to your conduct, capacity or compatibility, or to the employer's operational requirements; and that the termination followed a fair procedure. Failing any one of the three makes the termination unfair.

Certain reasons can never be fair, including pregnancy, disability, trade union membership or participation in lawful union activities, disclosing information you were entitled or required to disclose, refusing to do something an employer may not lawfully require, and exercising any right conferred by the Act.

If an arbitrator or the Labour Court finds the termination unfair, it may order reinstatement, re-engagement, or compensation of not less than twelve months' remuneration. Where reinstatement or re-engagement is ordered and the employer decides not to comply, the employer pays twelve months' wages in addition to the wages and benefits owed from the date of the unfair termination to the date of final payment.

One protection that costs nothing to know: this Sub-Part does not apply if you have been with the employer for less than six months, whether under one contract or several. Under six months you still have your notice and your final pay, but not the unfair-termination remedy.

Retrenchment is a process, not an announcement

Where the reason is the employer's operational requirements, the Act requires a procedure. The employer must give notice of any intention to retrench as soon as it is contemplated, disclose all relevant information for proper consultation, and consult on five specific things: the reasons, measures to avoid or minimise the retrenchment, how employees will be selected, the timing, and the severance pay in respect of the retrenchments.

That consultation must happen with a recognised trade union, or a registered union with members in the workplace, or with the affected employees directly where they are not represented. If no agreement is reached, the matter goes to mediation, and then to arbitration, which must be concluded within thirty days — during which no retrenchment may take effect.

An employer that announces retrenchments as a finished decision has skipped the part the law actually requires.

Frequently asked questions

My contract says 21 days' annual leave. Which one applies?

The Act's 28 days. A contract cannot go below the statutory floor; it can only improve on it. The same reasoning applies to every figure in this guide.

Can my employer pay me cash instead of giving me my 28 days?

Not as a way of cancelling leave you should be taking. The Act forbids an employer requiring or permitting you to take annual leave in place of other leave, and it sets deadlines by which leave must actually be taken. Payment does arise on termination for untaken and accrued leave, and where you consent to work during a period of annual leave. What an employer cannot do is quietly convert your leave into a payment you never agreed to.

I resigned. Do I get severance?

No. Severance is payable where the employer terminates. You are still owed everything else on the final-payment list: outstanding remuneration, untaken leave pay, accrued pro rata leave, and your certificate of service.

I was dismissed for misconduct. Is that the end of it?

Not automatically. Severance is excluded only for a fair termination on grounds of misconduct — and it is the employer who must prove the reason was valid and fair and that a fair procedure was followed. If it cannot, the termination is unfair whatever the letter says.

Does my employer have to tell me my rights?

Yes. Every employer must display a statement, in the prescribed form, of employees' rights under the Act, in a conspicuous place.

I have never had a written contract. Am I covered?

Yes. The Act applies to the employment relationship, not to the paperwork. In fact, where an employer fails to produce a written contract or the required written particulars in legal proceedings, the burden of proving or disproving a disputed term of employment falls on the employer. Missing paperwork is the employer's problem, not yours.

Where do I take a dispute?

To the Commission for Mediation and Arbitration, which handles employment disputes before they reach the Labour Court. Do it promptly. Employment disputes carry time limits set outside this Act, and a strong claim brought late is worth less than a modest one brought on time.

Reviewed 4 September 2026. Every rule and figure above is taken from the Employment and Labour Relations Act , the official revised edition published by the Office of the Attorney General. Section numbers follow that revised edition; the Act prints the original 2004 numbering alongside. Minimum wage rates are set separately by sectoral wage orders and are not part of this Act.

This article is general information, not legal advice. If your job or your final payment is at stake, get advice on your own facts.