What the template actually is
The document most households encounter isn’t something a family or an intermediary writes up on its own — it’s JTKSM’s own published sample Contract of Employment, developed with ILO and MOHR input, and used as the standard reference for engaging a foreign domestic worker. It sets out the baseline terms both sides are agreeing to going in: who the parties are, the nature of the work, and the obligations that come with formalising the arrangement, rather than leaving those to be improvised case by case.
One of its own standard terms is the renewal clause: the employer “shall renew the Worker’s Visit Pass (Temporary Employment) three (3) months before the expiry date.” That isn’t a separate contractual invention — it matches the exact window Immigration states on its own pages for the Visit Pass (Temporary Employment), covered in full in the dedicated renewal guide. The contract and the permit system are anchored to the same deadline, not running on two different clocks.
Where the Employment Act fills in — and overrides
Ending the arrangement isn’t something the contract sets the rules for on its own. In Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan, Employment Act 1955 s.57 governs it directly: either side can end the contract with 14 days’ notice, or by paying an indemnity equal to 14 days’ wages instead, and either side can end it immediately, with no notice and no payment, if the other party’s conduct is inconsistent with the contract’s own terms. The full breakdown of how that rule works sits in the dedicated guide on her rights under the Act — this page’s job is only to place it as the statute the contract operates under, not restate it.
Two further protections apply regardless of what the individual contract says, because they’re not something either side can contract away: the weekly rest day under s.59, and the wage-deduction framework under s.24. A contract can’t lawfully remove either one by omitting it or writing something narrower — both are covered in their own dedicated guides, including exactly which deductions the framework does and doesn’t allow.
Where this template doesn’t reach: Sabah and Sarawak
Everything above — the standard JTKSM/ILO contract template and the Employment Act framework underneath it — applies to Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan. Sabah and Sarawak aren’t regional variants of the same system; each runs its own separate labour ordinance, with its own licensing route and its own contract framework. Sabah, for instance, carries its own reporting duty of 14 days from the start of employment, distinct from the Peninsular Act’s provisions.
Sarawak’s system runs on a different structure again — its HAVEN platform works through an Approval Letter followed by a Labour Licence, not this JTKSM/ILO contract template. A household hiring in either state should work from its own state’s dedicated guide rather than assume the renewal clause, the termination rule, or any other term described here carries over unchanged.