Czech construction lost its Ukrainian labour pool to the war and to Germany, and the Association of Building Entrepreneurs puts the need at 74,000 additional workers by 2030. The Philippines supplies tradesmen who have built the Gulf's cities for forty years. This page covers which trades a Czech contractor can bring through the programme, how the crew is structured and tested, and the one classification rule that decides whether a role qualifies.
Skilled construction trades — carpenters, masons and bricklayers, steel fixers, concrete workers, plasterers, tilers, painters, electricians, plumbers — sit in CZ-ISCO group 7 and are recruited through the Qualified Employee Programme on Employee Cards; general labourers in group 9 are outside the programme, so a Czech contractor recruits tradesmen from the Philippines and labourers locally. The contractor is the employer and deploys the crew across its own projects; lending the crew to a subcontractor is not an option, because the subcontractor would have to be the employer on the card. Plant operators come as skilled construction workers and obtain the Czech qualifications for excavators, cranes and lifting equipment after arrival.
A Czech employer hires a Filipino on an Employee Card (zaměstnanecká karta) — one permit for residence and work, issued by the Ministry of the Interior for the length of the employment up to two years and renewable — and reaches the Czech Embassy in Manila through the Government's Qualified Employee Programme (Program kvalifikovaný zaměstnanec), run by the Ministry of Industry and Trade with the Chamber of Commerce, the Confederation of Industry, CzechInvest and the Agrarian Chamber as garants. The programme does not shorten the Ministry's statutory decision time of 60 days (90 in complex cases) and does not replace the 30-day labour-market test in the central vacancy register; what it does is guarantee the candidate an appointment within the Philippine annual quota of 10,300 places — set by Government Regulation No. 109/2026 Coll. for the Embassy in Manila (11,400 Employee Card applications a year, 10,300 of them for the programme), divided evenly into twelve months of 858 and assigned to named workers at a release at 10:00 on the published day; unused monthly places are not carried over. In 2025 the programme admitted 10,795 workers from thirteen countries, 4,791 of them from the Philippines — the largest group — and in July, August and September 2026 the monthly Philippine capacity was exhausted within hours of release. On 15 October 2026 Deputy Prime Minister Havlíček announced that the quotas for the Philippines and India will be raised; a figure of 12,000 a year from January 2027 circulated from the Brno engineering fair without ministerial confirmation, industry recommended at least 15,000, and until a government regulation is published the 10,300 quota applies. Wages must be at least CZK 27,328 gross a month in 2026 (1.22 × the minimum wage of CZK 22,400) — CZK 30,378 from 1 January 2027 — and not lower than comparable employees. The client is always the employer; Orienta Czech administers the process under power of attorney.
The Association of Building Entrepreneurs puts the industry's need at 74,000 additional workers by 2030, with the Ukrainian workforce reduced by the war and by competition from Germany, and Filipinos already visible on Czech sites — Novinky reported in June 2026 that construction, transport, healthcare and industry were the sectors hiring them; the Czech-language site carries the 2026 shortage analysis. Contractors that plan Filipino crews on the programme's calendar — tradesmen through the programme, labourers locally, cohorts on monthly releases, housing registered before the first flight — have crews that stay for the card's two years.
Recruitment runs through our own DMW-licensed agency, Prime Search Manpower Agency Inc. in Makati (licence DMW-027-LB-11182024): your company is accredited at the Migrant Workers Office at the Philippine Embassy in Prague — which sits in the same city as the Ministry of the Interior that decides the Employee Card, keeping contract verification and the immigration decision in one place — the job order is registered with the DMW, and every worker leaves Manila with a verified contract, medical clearance, pre-departure orientation and an Overseas Employment Certificate. Recruitment follows the employer-pays principle: no applicant pays for an interview, a trade test or a place on a shortlist. Your company is the employer from day one; Orienta Czech, the group's EU delivery entity licensed by the Czech Ministry of Labour, runs the recruitment and the immigration administration under your power of attorney and never employs or leases the workers.
Everything here is subject to the Act on the Residence of Foreign Nationals (326/1999 Coll.), the Employment Act (435/2004 Coll.), the Government's Qualified Employee Programme as published by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of the Interior's practice in force and Philippine DMW rules.
Skilled trades in CZ-ISCO group 7 — carpenters, masons, steel fixers, plasterers, tilers, painters, electricians, plumbers. General labourers (group 9) do not; they are recruited locally.
No — the subcontractor would have to be the employer on the Employee Card. You deploy your own employees across your own sites.
First cohort in three to five months; the full crew over two to three monthly quota releases.
As evidence of training; Czech qualifications for plant, cranes and lifting equipment are obtained after arrival.
General information for employers, not legal or migration advice. Rules change; we re-verify before each hire.