Worker Accommodation and the Certificate for Accommodation

Start with the name, because almost every article on this subject gets it wrong. The statute is the Employees’ Minimum Standards of Housing, Accommodations and Amenities Act 1990 (Act 446). It used to be the Workers’ Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act, and paragraph 4(a) of Act A1604 changed the short title with effect from 1 June 2020.

The Attorney General’s Chambers portal still displays the old heading on its own index page for Act 446. The gazetted statute text does not, and neither does any subsidiary instrument made since 2020. If a compliance memo cites “the Workers’ Minimum Standards Act”, it was written from a search result rather than from the Act.

That is the small error. The large one is who the Act protects.

Does Act 446 apply to Malaysian employees?

Yes — and this is the single most common misconception in Malaysian HR content.

Part IIIA, the part that carries the certificate and the standards, is switched on by s.24A: “This Part shall apply to employees who are employed otherwise than to work in an estate.” That is a sector test. It says nothing about citizenship. Section 3 takes the meaning of “employee” straight from s.2(1) of the Employment Act 1955, which is likewise nationality-neutral. And s.24D(1) is flat: no accommodation shall be provided to an employee unless certified with a Certificate for Accommodation.

Where does the migrant-worker framing come from, then? From a different instrument doing a different job. P.U.(A) 81/2021 requires that a foreign employee — defined as a holder of a Visit Pass (Temporary Employment) under regulation 11 of the Immigration Regulations 1963, excluding domestic servants — be provided with accommodation under Part IIIA. That regulation creates a duty to house. It is not a limit on who the standards cover.

The practical consequence is stark. An employer housing local operators in a company hostel, a plantation housing Malaysian harvesters outside an estate, a construction firm putting up local site staff — all need a Certificate for Accommodation, all must meet the floor-area and sanitary ratios, and all are exposed to the same penalties. Publish that in a compliance matrix and you are ahead of most of the market.

Two geographic limits do apply. Act 446 reaches Peninsular Malaysia and the Federal Territory of Labuan only (s.1(2)). And the older Parts II and III, the estate housing, nurseries and estate hospital provisions, do not apply inside a City Council, Municipal Council or Federal Territory area — a carve-out that does not touch Part IIIA.

What is the Certificate for Accommodation?

The permission to house anyone. Section 24C(1)(d) makes issuing it a function of the Director General of Labour; in practice state Labour Department directors exercise the power through a series of vesting orders. Section 24D(2) lets either the employer or a centralised accommodation provider apply, with the prescribed processing fee.

Applications run through the Sistem Permohonan Perakuan Penginapan at akta446.mohr.gov.my. There is no paper “JTK/PPP” form, contrary to a good deal of secondary guidance: you apply online, print the acknowledgement, and lodge it with the checklist documents and the fee at the nearest Pejabat Tenaga Kerja. A separate application is required for each accommodation address.

Fees are set by P.U.(A) 248/2020, in force from 1 September 2020, and are non-refundable:

Applicant	Capacity	Fee
Employer	10 employees or fewer	RM100
Employer	More than 10	RM300
Centralised accommodation provider	Up to 500 employees	RM2,000
Centralised accommodation provider	More than 500	RM5,000

Payment is by bank draft, postal order or money order to the Ketua Pengarah Tenaga Kerja.

No statutory deadline attaches to the application, and none is needed: the obligation is structural rather than dated. You simply may not house anyone before the certificate exists.

What are the minimum standards?

They sit in the Accommodation and Centralized Accommodation Regulations 2020, P.U.(A) 250/2020, in operation from 1 September 2020.

Space. Regulation 5 requires bedroom floor area of not less than 3.6 square metres per employee outside a dormitory, and a sleeping area of not less than 3 square metres per employee in a dormitory.

Beds and personal storage. Regulation 4(1) treats these as unshareable: a single bed of not less than 1.7 square metres; where double-decker beds are used, clearance between the two beds of not less than 0.7 metres; a mattress of at least four inches, with a pillow and a blanket; and a lockable cupboard measuring at least 0.35 m by 0.35 m by 0.9 m for valuables including the passport, accessible by the employee at any time. Regulation 4(2) permits either single beds or double-decker beds — triple bunks are excluded by not being on the list rather than by an express prohibition.

Sanitary ratios, from the Schedule to regulation 3(1): bathrooms and toilets, whether separate or combined, at one to every six employees outside a dormitory and one to every fifteen in a dormitory.

The Schedule also requires a rest area, a dining area with chairs and tables, a bedroom or sleeping area, a kitchen area, a fan for each rest, dining and sleeping area, a lamp for each of those plus the kitchen, bathrooms and toilets, a clothes-drying area, a first aid kit and a dustbin. Regulation 6 requires water and electricity supply.

Two things people expect to find are not there. There is no maximum number of persons per room — the only constraint is per-person floor area, so a figure quoted as “maximum N per room” did not come from this instrument. And fire safety is not in the regulations: s.24J(c) of the Act imposes a duty to take fire safety measures “in accordance with the relevant written laws”, deferring to the Fire Services Act 1988 and the Uniform Building By-Laws rather than prescribing anything numeric.

Rent has just changed. P.U.(A) 249/2020 capped the rental or charges deductible under s.24G(1) at RM100 a month. P.U.(A) 49/2026, gazetted 3 February 2026, raised that cap to RM150 a month with effect from 1 March 2026. Any deduction schedule still running at RM100 is undercharging lawfully; any payroll rule that was written to the old cap needs a look.

What must the employer do after people move in?

Two duties that are routinely missed because they arrive after the certificate, when everyone assumes the compliance work is finished.

Notice of occupation within 30 days. Section 24E(1) requires the employer to inform the Director General within thirty days from the date accommodation is occupied by an employee. The form is Borang AC2, submitted in two copies to the nearest Pejabat Tenaga Kerja and acknowledged. Failure is an offence under s.24E(2), fine up to RM10,000. This runs each time employees are placed, not once for the building.

Inspection twice a month. Section 24L requires a person in charge to be appointed, and s.24L(2)(b) requires that person to visit and inspect the accommodation at least twice a month, keeping the inspection record at the place of employment. Section 24L(2)(c) adds a duty to take an employee to a clinic or hospital on a health complaint and to keep a record of complaints.

What are the penalties — and is the fine per worker?

No. There is no per-employee multiplier anywhere in Act 446. The claim that the fine is “RM50,000 per worker” is repeated across HR blogs and it does not survive a search of the Act’s penalty provisions. What makes prolonged breach expensive is the daily fine, not headcount.

Provision	Offence	Penalty
s.24D(3)	Employer provides accommodation with no certificate	Fine up to RM50,000
s.24D(4)	Centralised accommodation provider does the same	Fine up to RM50,000 or 1 year, or both
s.24E(2)	No notice of occupation	Fine up to RM10,000
s.24H(2)	Using a building unfit for human habitation	Fine up to RM50,000
s.33 (general)	Any breach with no express penalty — including s.24F standards, s.24I amenities, s.24J safety, s.24K maintenance, s.24L	Fine up to RM50,000 plus up to RM1,000 for each day the offence continues

There is an oddity in the structure worth naming. Where a centralised accommodation provider breaches the minimum standards, regulations 3(3), 4(4), 5(4) and 6(3) of P.U.(A) 250/2020 set a fine of up to RM1,000 or six months. Where the employer breaches the identical standard, regulations 3(2), 4(3), 5(3) and 6(2) say only that the employer commits an offence — with no penalty stated, which routes it to s.33 and its RM50,000 maximum plus RM1,000 a day. The employer’s exposure is roughly fifty times the provider’s for the same defect.

Section 28A allows compounding, under P.U.(A) 82/2021, and s.29A puts directors and managers in the frame for a company’s offence.

The link most compliance matrices miss

Act 446 is not a self-contained problem. Section 60K(4)(a)(ii) of the Employment Act 1955 lets the Director General approve the employment of a foreign employee only if the employer has no outstanding matter or case relating to any conviction under the Employment Act, the Employees’ Social Security Act 1969, Act 446 or the National Wages Consultative Council Act 2011.

So an unresolved accommodation conviction does not merely cost RM50,000. It blocks the prior approval that every foreign hire depends on. The housing file and the recruitment pipeline are wired together in one subsection, and hardly anyone draws the line.

Common mistakes

Treating Act 446 as a migrant-worker statute. Part IIIA is keyed to sector, not nationality. Locals in provided housing are covered.

Citing the old short title. It changed on 1 June 2020, notwithstanding what the AGC index page still displays.

Quoting RM50,000 per employee. It is per offence, with a separate daily fine of up to RM1,000.

Stopping at the certificate. The 30-day notice of occupation and the twice-monthly inspection record are separate, ongoing duties with their own penalties.

Still deducting to the RM100 rent cap. It has been RM150 since 1 March 2026.

Assuming Sabah or Sarawak coverage. Act 446 does not reach either state, and the Part IVA housing provisions of the 2025 Labour Ordinance amendments were expressly excluded from the 1 May 2025 commencement and remain outside it.

What’s next

Count the addresses, not the workers. Every accommodation needs its own certificate, its own AC2 notice within 30 days of first occupation, and its own twice-monthly inspection record — and the audit trail lives or dies on those records, not on the certificate hanging in the office.

Then check the local-employee hostels. That is where the unregistered accommodation almost always is, because nobody thought the Act applied to them.