With four days to go to the new year, the Immigration Department has expressed readiness to implement the new online direct hiring system for domestic helpers, as announced by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in Budget 2018.

According to Immigration director (foreign workers) Khairul Khar Yahya (photo), potential employers would have two options to directly hire their domestic workers from approved source countries through the online system to be launched on Jan 1.

“In order for us to implement this online system, the potential domestic worker must already be in Malaysia,” said Khairul in an interview with Nasionalfm radio this morning, which was also aired live on its Facebook page.

He further explained that potential employers could either personally go to the source country and bring back the worker on a social visit visa, or wait for their arrival at the airport here.

In both cases, employers would first have to register themselves on the online system to receive an ID and password, to allow the department to conduct a screening of their eligibility.

“After we have screened the employer, then we will screen the workers,” said Khairul.

“Eligible employers will log into the system using the ID and password, enter the name of the worker and the person’s passport number.

“From there, our system will screen whether the potential worker has any records of past immigration offences,” he said, adding that such offences could include running away from a previous employer with no valid reasons.

"For this programme, the government has also allowed any potential workers who arrived here from Jan 1 to Dec 31 (on a tourist visa) and have overstayed to be registered (by an employer)."

The next step after both screenings have been cleared, Khairul said, would be for the employer to take their potential domestic worker for a medical check-up at any clinic accredited by the Foreign Workers Medical Examination Monitoring Agency (Fomema).

He added, among others, the medical check-up was done to ensure that the potential domestic worker is free of any current or past contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis or hepatitis.

In terms of costs to the employers, Khairul reassured that it would only be a fraction of the past payments made to maid recruitment agencies.

“The cost would be as previously announced by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi,” he said.

Zahid had announced that employers need to only pay RM1,635 to the Immigration Department under the new online system, up to 90 percent reduction from the average cost of RM18,000 through third-party agents.

The RM1,635 figure is non-inclusive of flight tickets or costs to make a new passport, Zahid had said.

Immigration director-general Mustafar Ali had also reportedly said that employers now have the option to directly hire their domestic helpers or engage the help of agents in the source country.

'Indonesian laws don't allow direct hiring'

Malaysiakini, however, understands that no formal decision has been made over a solution to a restriction under Indonesian labour laws - the most popular source country for Malaysians seeking domestic workers - against its citizens from being directly hired to work in households here.

“Indonesian laws do not allow such direct hiring. As of now, every potential domestic worker must exit (the country) through an agent and also has an agent here (in Malaysia),” said a source from the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

According to the Immigration Department's website, the seven others approved source countries for domestic helpers are India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

It was however also stated that Cambodia had since January 2012 imposed a freeze on sending its citizens to work as domestic helpers here.