Nasrikakh Paidin, coordinator of the Indonesian Domestic Workers Association, said many workers fled abusive employers without their passports or legal documents, which employers or recruitment agencies had earlier confiscated.

“Sometimes they come here through the proper procedures. But when employers abuse them or refuse to pay wages, they cannot endure it.

“They are not actually running away; they are seeking help,” she said at a forum on workers’ rights organised by Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).

Nasrikah said some workers endured abuse out of fear of becoming undocumented or being arrested.

“If workers are too afraid to escape, some end up dying in their employers’ homes,” she said, citing the case of Adelina Lisao, an Indonesian domestic worker who died in Penang in 2018 following alleged abuse.

Malaysia has about 107,000 legally registered foreign domestic workers as of October 2025, though past estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggested the actual number could be significantly higher due to undocumented workers.

According to Nasrikah, many workers struggle to seek justice because they are isolated inside employers’ homes and often lack access to legal representation.

She said domestic workers remain excluded from full labour protections, including minimum wage guarantees, partly because domestic work continues to be stereotyped as “women’s work”.

Sharing her own experience as a domestic worker, Nasrikah said she used to wake up at 5am and work until 11pm.

“Even when there was no work left, I was not allowed to sit down. I had to keep finding work to do,” she said.

Nasrikah acknowledged that recent Malaysia-Indonesia bilateral agreements had improved protections involving rest days, leave, salaries and job scopes, but said enforcement remained inconsistent.

She called for domestic workers to be recognised, not merely as a labour category but as individuals with families, ambitions and rights of their own.