What the Act covers, region by region
The Employment Act’s own opening section is unambiguous: it applies to Peninsular Malaysia only, with one stated extension to the Federal Territory of Labuan effective November 2000. No equivalent extension to Sabah or Sarawak exists in the text. Those two states run their own separate labour ordinances instead, with their own rules on rest day, termination, and reporting duties — worth checking directly rather than assuming Peninsular figures apply everywhere.
Within Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, a domestic employee is covered by the Act as an "employee," but Part XI — the three sections specifically about domestic employees — is short, and most of what governs her day-to-day protections sits elsewhere in the Act, filtered through a specific exclusion list covered below.
The two 30-day notification duties, and the base termination rule
Beyond the already-documented s.57B (notify the Director General of Labour within 30 days when her service ends), s.57A sets a mirror-image duty at the start of employment: an employer must inform the Director General within 30 days of hiring her, in whatever manner the Director General determines. Both carry the same fine of up to RM50,000 for non-compliance. The Act’s own amendment-history table suggests s.57A was newly added by the 2022 amendment while s.57B is older and only had its penalty raised then — worth treating as a secondary detail to confirm against the amendment gazette directly, since the table itself was harder to extract cleanly than the operative section text.
The base termination rule itself, s.57, is simpler than the general employee notice scale: either side can end the contract with 14 days’ notice, or by paying an indemnity equal to 14 days’ wages instead of giving notice. Either side can also end it immediately, with no notice and no payment, if the other party’s conduct is inconsistent with the contract’s own terms.
What she doesn’t get — and why this is worth stating plainly
The Act’s First Schedule lists a specific set of sections that don’t apply to a domestic employee, and the list is longer than most people expect: no statutory paid public holidays, no annual leave, no sick leave, no paternity leave, and no capped working hours or night-work rules under the Act — all provisions that apply to most other employees covered by the same law. The formal misconduct/inquiry dismissal procedure other employees get also doesn’t apply; s.57’s own conduct-based termination clause is the mechanism instead, without a stated inquiry requirement.
What does remain, alongside the rest day and s.57 termination rule, is the Act’s wage-deduction framework — covered in the dedicated guide on what an employer can and can’t lawfully deduct from her pay.