Leave management Cameroon employers apply rests on the Labour Code, Law No. 92/007 of 14 August 1992, whose Articles 89 to 93 set out the right to paid leave, the extra days and how leave is paid. On top of these rules come sector collective agreements and an old decree on calculating the leave allowance, still cited in practice. For a company based in Douala and Yaoundé, sometimes with branches in Garoua, Bafoussam or Limbe, the challenge is to keep identical balances everywhere, approve requests quickly and pay the right allowance at the right time. This guide goes through the rules one by one, then how to put the right tools behind them.
The basic entitlement: one and a half days per month
Unless a collective agreement or the contract is more favourable, the worker accrues one and a half working days of leave per month of actual service (Article 89), or 18 working days for a full year. The Code specifies that a period of four weeks or twenty-four days of work is equivalent to one month of actual service, which settles the case of part-time employees and those on irregular hours.
The right to take leave opens after one year of service (Article 92). A collective agreement or contract granting more leave than the legal minimum may require a longer period of service before leave is taken, but not more than two years.
Periods treated as actual service
The following count towards accrual: time off for a workplace accident or occupational disease, absences for medically certified illness up to six months, maternity leave and temporary lay-off (Article 89). Maternity leave lasts fourteen weeks, four of them before the expected date of birth, with a possible six-week extension in the event of illness linked to the pregnancy or the birth; the daily allowance is paid by the CNPS (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale, the national social insurance fund) (Article 84). In your tool, each absence type should therefore be flagged as “generates entitlement” or “does not generate entitlement”.
Extra days provided for by the Code
| Who | Extra days (Article 90) |
|---|---|
| Young worker under 18 | Entitlement raised to 2.5 days per month of service |
| Working mother | 2 working days per child covered by the text, registered with the civil registry and living in the household (1 day if the main leave does not exceed 6 days) |
| Seniority | 2 working days per full period of 5 years of service, continuous or not |
For mothers, the text refers to a child “aged six” on the date leave begins; check the interpretation used by your collective agreement and apply it consistently. The seniority extra is added to the mothers' extra. An employee who reaches ten years with the company during the year sees their entitlement rise on that date: a classic calculation that gets missed in a spreadsheet.
Leave for trade union training
Unpaid leave may be granted for approved workers' education or trade union training courses (Article 91). Up to eighteen working days, it is treated as actual work when calculating paid leave and seniority.
Special leave and public holidays
Up to ten days per year, paid special leave that is not deducted from annual leave is granted for family events affecting the employee's household (Article 89, paragraph 4). The details are left to a decree and, in practice, the list of events and their duration appear in sector collective agreements. Copy this list into your reference data, with the supporting documents required and the annual cap.
Public holidays are not working days: they are not deducted from leave. The Cameroonian calendar mixes civil holidays on fixed dates and religious holidays on variable dates, both Christian and Muslim, sometimes announced at short notice. A central calendar update, applied to every site, avoids discrepancies between Douala and the branches.
Calculating the leave allowance
The employer pays the allowance no later than the last day before departure (Article 93). The Code leaves the calculation method to a decree. The reference text cited in practice is Decree No. 68-DF-254 of 10 July 1968, issued under the former Code: it sets the allowance at a fraction of total remuneration received during the reference period, namely 1/16 under the general scheme and 1/12 for young workers under eighteen. Each extra day (seniority, mothers) gives rise to an allowance equal to the main allowance divided by the number of working days in the main leave.
As this decree predates the 1992 Code, check the rule in your collective agreement, which may be more favourable, and apply whichever method is more advantageous for the employee.
Worked illustration
Take an accountant in Douala who received 4,800,000 FCFA in total remuneration over her twelve reference months. With the 1/16 fraction, the main allowance comes to 300,000 FCFA for 18 working days, or about 16,667 FCFA per day. If she is entitled to 2 seniority days, they add about 33,333 FCFA. These amounts illustrate the mechanism and are no substitute for reading your agreement.
Splitting, carry-over and time limits
Leave of more than twelve working days can be split by mutual agreement, provided that one portion is at least twelve consecutive working days (Article 90). The 1968 decree allows departure to be brought forward or delayed by three months at most, unless the employee agrees or there is an annual shutdown, and, at the employee's request, leave to be carried over up to two years of actual service.
On termination or expiry of the contract, accrued entitlement is paid as an indemnity (Article 92). In all other cases, a payment in lieu of leave is expressly prohibited. The right to leave lapses three years after work ends: a former employee can therefore claim leftover leave long after leaving, which is why a retained, verifiable history of balances matters.
Running leave management Cameroon day to day
Multi-site Cameroonian companies often face the same difficulties: paper requests that are slow to come back from branches, balances kept differently depending on the manager, approvals stuck when the manager is travelling, and payroll discovering a departure on leave after the cut-off. A few simple rules make a real difference:
- a departure plan per department agreed at the start of the year, shared with branch managers;
- a minimum notice period per type of leave, written into the internal memo;
- a designated back-up approver for each team;
- a cut-off date for sending information to payroll, so the allowance is ready before departure;
- leave documents available in French and English for teams in the English-speaking regions.
Which tool for leave management Cameroon?
A spreadsheet is enough for a dozen employees on a single site. Beyond that, leave management Cameroon becomes a payroll matter: the allowance depends on remuneration for the whole period, the extra days change on anniversary dates and the three-year time limit means keeping the history.
Socium's leave management Cameroon module calculates balances according to the configured rules, receives requests from the employee mobile app (designed to work on 3G), routes them to the manager or their back-up for approval and feeds compliant payroll in Cameroon. Common organisational principles are covered in our article on leave management in companies (in French), and the monthly cycle in our guide to payroll management in Cameroon.
Questions to ask during a demo
- Does the counter apply 1.5 days per month and the equivalence of 24 days of work to one month?
- Are the seniority extras per five-year period and the mothers' extras automatic?
- Can you configure the fraction used to calculate the allowance under the collective agreement?
- Is the balance history kept after the employee leaves?
Frequently asked questions on leave management Cameroon
How many days of leave per year in Cameroon?
One and a half working days per month of actual service, or 18 working days per year, plus two days per five-year period of seniority and the days granted to working mothers.
When must the leave allowance be paid?
No later than the last day before leave begins. In your leave management Cameroon process, this means sending departures to payroll before the cut-off.
Can an employee claim leave after leaving the company?
Yes: the right to leave lapses three years after work ends.
Is special leave for family events paid?
Yes, up to ten days per year, without reducing annual leave.
Key takeaways
- Leave management Cameroon rests on Articles 89 to 93 of the 1992 Labour Code.
- 1.5 working days per month, 2.5 days for under-18s, plus 2 days per 5-year period of seniority.
- Ten days of paid special leave per year for family events.
- Allowance paid no later than the day before departure, under the 1968 decree or the more favourable agreement.
- Three-year time limit after the contract ends: keep the balance history.
The text of the Cameroonian Labour Code (Law No. 92/007) is available online. To see these rules configured for your workforce, book a personalised demo.
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