KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 15 — The Immigration Department’s enforcement of a directive preventing Muslims from hiring non-Muslims as maids is drawing criticism from agencies, which said the rule hurts the prospects of Muslims in need of domestic help.

Questioning why an employee’s faith should be of any concern, Malaysian Maid Employers Asso­ciation (MAMA) president Engku Ahmad Fauzi said the rule would heavily limit the candidates that Muslim families may hire.

“Religion should not be an obstacle. When you work in an office, you don’t base it on religion and likewise, this should not be the case for the maid in the home,” he was quoted as saying to local news portal The Star Online.

Quoting two anonymous maid agency owners, the portal reported that all those applying for non-Muslim domestic helpers for Muslim employers had their applications rejected allegedly due to the policy that only allows Muslim maids to work for Muslim employers.

The owner of one maid agency in Selangor was told that the directive has always been in place, despite her insisting that she was never informed of the new policy.

“If they did not allow Muslims to hire non-Muslims from the beginning, why did they allow it earlier?

“There was no circular to inform us about this,” she was quoted as saying.

Another maid agency owner in Kuala Lumpur said, however, that the policy was not new, but noted that previous directors-general of the department had been flexible “depending on the situation,” The Star Online reported.

The current D-G is Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali, who was transferred from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) at the start of August.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in June announced that the government bring in more Cambodians to work as domestic helpers, a sector that has been dominated by Indonesians previously.

Malaysia has been struggling to cope with dwindling supply to meet the increasing demands for domestic helpers, an industry that had previously been filled by Indonesian migrant workers.

However, Jakarta has since tightened its regulations on sending its citizens abroad to work as maids after widespread cases of abuse at the hands of their foreign employers.

Indonesia had temporarily banned its citizens from working as maids here, but later lifted the moratorium after negotiating new terms with Putrajaya that included higher wages and better protection.