Facts that have a right answer
Three checks resolve to a clear yes or no: does the licence category cover foreign domestic worker placement (only B or C do), does the company name and licence number appear on JTKSM’s active register, and does any fee charged to the worker stay within the First Schedule’s cap. Any one of these failing is a concrete reason to stop, not a matter of interpretation.
These checks take minutes and don’t depend on how trustworthy the agency seems in conversation; run them before discussing anything else, since a licence problem doesn’t become less real because the rest of the conversation went well.
- Category A claiming it can place a foreign domestic worker.
- Company name or licence number absent from JTKSM’s active list.
- A fee to the worker that exceeds the First Schedule cap.
Patterns worth noting, even without a fixed rule
Some warning signs aren’t violations of anything specific but still matter: an agency unwilling to provide a written, itemised fee breakdown, unwilling to put guarantee or replacement terms in writing, or pressuring you to pay before you’ve seen written terms at all. None of this is illegal on its own, since the household fee and guarantee terms aren’t regulated, but it leaves you with nothing to hold the agency to if something goes wrong later.
Treat reluctance to document anything in writing as information about how a dispute would likely go, rather than a technicality to push past.