One statute, one set of licence categories, everywhere
Act 246 sets out three licence categories: Category A covers placement within Malaysia only, Category B adds placement of a foreign domestic servant within Malaysia, and Category C adds placement of a non-citizen employee generally. A household hiring a foreign domestic worker needs an agency holding Category B or C — this requirement, and the fee caps and penalties that go with it, are identical whichever region the household is in, because it’s the same Act throughout the country.
What an agency may legally charge is narrower than most households expect, and this is also identical nationwide: the Act caps exactly two fee types — a registration fee and a placement fee — and both are owed by the worker being placed, not a general fee the agency charges the household for its overall service. No official source anywhere in the country publishes a cap on what an agency may charge a household for its overall placement package.
Where the actual administering office differs
The Act’s own interpretation section names a different “Director General” for each region: the Director General of Labour for Peninsular Malaysia (the same office that oversees the Employment Act 1955), the Director of Labour, Sabah (under the Sabah Labour Ordinance), and the Director of Labour, Sarawak (under the Sarawak Labour Ordinance). One statute, three separate administering structures.
JTKSM runs Peninsular Malaysia’s process with a live, searchable public register showing each agency’s full company name, registration number, licence category, and validity window. JTK Sabah runs its own equivalent process with its own FAQ mirroring the same categories and penalties, though whether it publishes a comparably searchable public register isn’t confirmed. JTKSWK administers Sarawak’s licensing and has published static lists of licensed agencies periodically — the exact file changes with each update, so the current version needs checking directly rather than relying on any specific link.
Where to raise a concern, and why the answer also isn’t uniform
In Peninsular Malaysia, JTKSM’s general complaint channels — SISPAA, the eAduan@JTKSM app, phone, and email — are the documented route, though they’re framed primarily around employer-employee labour disputes rather than a household’s dispute with the agency itself specifically; since JTKSM is the same body that can suspend or revoke a licence, using the same channel for an agency-related concern is reasonable, without being a separately named, dedicated process. The digital-service listing for this specific channel also states it’s scoped to Peninsular Malaysia.
For Sabah and Sarawak, a household would go through JTK Sabah or JTKSWK directly rather than JTKSM’s channels — neither department’s own complaint-channel page was confirmed as matching JTKSM’s process, so confirming the right channel directly with the relevant regional department is the honest approach rather than assuming parity across all three regions.