Why only nine agencies, and a portal called eMigrate
India treats the export of labour as a government-monitored process, not an open market. Malaysia sits on the list of countries requiring Emigration Check Required clearance, and every case has to be registered and tracked through eMigrate, the portal run out of New Delhi. For this specific worker category, the High Commission of India in Kuala Lumpur has named a small number of state government agencies as the only bodies allowed to place an Indian woman in domestic work here, covering Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Karnataka. A private recruiter offering to arrange an Indian domestic worker outside this list is not working within the current legal channel, whatever the arrangement is called.
A replacement law, the Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill 2025, has been drafted and discussed publicly, but whether it has passed as of this writing could not be confirmed. Treat the 1983 Act and the nine-agency rule as what currently governs the route, and don't take a bill still under debate as the law in force.
The paperwork a household has to assemble
The Malaysian side starts the same way as any foreign domestic helper hire: Home Ministry approval and a Visa with Reference from Immigration. From there, the file moves onto eMigrate, where the household's chosen state agency uploads the employment contract and supporting documents for the worker's Protector of Emigrants to review. India's High Commission adds a second layer on top of Malaysia's own process: an affidavit, sealed by a notary and certified by India's Ministry of External Affairs, in which the employer personally undertakes to cover return airfare, settle outstanding dues and return the worker's passport if the arrangement breaks down.
Attestation happens in person at the Indian Workers Resource Centre in Mont Kiara; per current reports, it takes a minimum of seven working days, with documents accepted only in the morning and collected in the afternoon, though confirm current hours and turnaround directly, and it's this attested set that lets the worker's Protector of Emigrants in India issue the No Objection Certificate she needs to depart.
- Employer bio-data and the Home Ministry approval letter, translated by a court interpreter and certified by Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- The worker's PLKS or i-Kad and the standard eMigrate employment contract, which cannot be altered
- A notarised repatriation affidavit and a Domestic Servant Insurance Scheme policy
- A US$2,500 bank guarantee, unless the worker is placed through one of the six exempted agencies
Figures worth confirming before you rely on them
Malaysia's general foreign domestic helper rules group India with the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Nepal under a household income threshold of about RM5,000 a month, a figure repeated by more than one placement agency but one that couldn't be re-confirmed directly against Malaysia Immigration's own page this pass, since its content loads by script rather than sitting in the page's raw text. Malaysia's RM750 personal bond for Indian workers comes from Immigration's own published bond schedule, though that schedule is technically written for a different visa category and only corroborated for domestic helpers by agency sources, not stated as FDH-specific by Immigration itself.
No documented freeze or pause specific to the India-Malaysia domestic worker corridor turned up in this research, unlike Indonesia's history of formal moratoria, but that's an absence of evidence rather than a confirmed clean record. The High Commission's own September 2025 notice warns that workers are being brought in through channels that skip the required visa route entirely, and points employers back toward eMigrate and the nine named agencies as the only route it recognises. Treat the corridor as open but under active scrutiny, and confirm the current income threshold, bond figures and corridor status directly with Immigration, the High Commission or your agency before you commit to a number or a timeline.