There are reports that adults are forced to work in gold mining in Chad. Migrants, mainly men, travel from southern and eastern Chad as well as from neighboring countries to the northern goldmining areas in Tibesti in search of economic opportunity. However, research indicates that many job-seekers are exploited by human smugglers who serve as recruiters for the northern gold mines, with deceptive promises regarding their employment arrangements and the wages they will earn. Workers frequently travel on credit and then must work to pay off their debt, which doubles when it is bought by the mine owners. Victims report withholding of pay and sale of their debt without their consent from one site boss to another. While the Chadian government has banned weapons at the handful of sites it controls, many other sites remain outside the reach of its security forces and are controlled by armed groups, where workers labor and live under constant threat of violence. Workers report experiencing abusive working conditions and physical violence, especially if they fail to find enough gold or attempt to leave. Some are induced to use narcotics such as tramadol to improve their performance. Reporting from an intergovernmental organization documented over 200 workers—out of a sample of 554—who had been subjected to indicators of forced labor in the northern gold mines; with an estimated mining population of between 20,000 and 40,000 workers in the area, this in conjunction with other evidence suggests conditions of forced labor are prevalent in gold mining in Chad.