Homecare: hiring a domestic helper without a placement fee

Why charge RM2,880 when an agency would charge five figures?

Because most of what an agency charges for is sourcing, and you’ve already done it. The helper is your cousin’s helper whose contract is ending. She’s the one who looked after your mother last year and is coming back from home leave. She’s the helper you’re bringing with you from Singapore. In every one of those cases a placement fee buys you a placement nobody performed.

In our opinion this is the least defensible line item in Malaysian domestic recruitment, and it persists because the alternative has been to file everything yourself. That is genuinely hard. You’d be arranging a medical at a clinic in rural Java, working out how to pay a candidate who has no bank account, and booking biometrics appointments in a language you may not read. So households pay the fee.

Homecare is the third option. We’re a licensed agency and we’ll do the difficult half at a published price, and you keep the part you were always doing anyway, which is choosing who lives in your home.

Which of the two services do you need?

RM2,880 is the Peninsular Malaysia service fee and RM17,800 is the full placement cost before wages. Neither figure includes the helper’s salary, and her salary is the larger number over a year: RM1,500 a month for an Indonesian helper and RM1,800 for a Filipino one. Budget for both from the start.

What does RM2,880 cover, and what does it leave out?

Five things, and they’re the five that make people give up and call an agency.

• Medical arrangements in Indonesia or the Philippines, including paying the clinic on your behalf
• Biometric registration and the visa application, filed by us
• Source-country compliance, training and certification
• Flight booking, airport pickup and insurance
• Permit issuance, delivered to your home

The reason we quote the rest per case instead of publishing one number is distance. A candidate in Surabaya with a valid passport and a candidate in a village four hours from the nearest accredited clinic cost different amounts to get onto a plane. Tell us where she is and we’ll price it inside one working day.

Is this the same in Kuala Lumpur and Kuching?

No, and this is the thing households moving between the two are most surprised by. Sarawak kept its own immigration when it joined the Federation in 1963 and still runs it. A permit issued in Kuala Lumpur gives you nothing in Kuching, and the medical provider, the permit document and the authority deciding your file are all different.

• Direct hire in Kuala Lumpur RM2,880 service fee. Filed federally.
• Direct hire in Kuching Filed with Sarawak Immigration under licence JTKSWK0042-C/24.
• Relocating to Malaysia with your helper From Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan.

What do we ask of you in return?

One thing. Keep to the contract you sign. We’ll do the filing, the chasing and the arrival logistics, and the price holds as long as the employment itself is lawful. This is the part of a direct hire that an agency would otherwise supervise for you, and it is now yours.

• Pay the salary in the contract, in full, on time, into an account in her name.
• Give her the rest day the contract provides, or pay the overtime rate instead.
• Register her with PERKESO and keep the contributions current.
• Renew her permit before it lapses. A lapsed permit is your offence, not hers.