Contracts & UAE Labor Law

Last updated: September 2026

Domestic Helper Duties and Responsibilities in the UAE 2026: Full Job Description

Every family that hires help in the UAE eventually asks the same question: what am I actually allowed to have her do? Domestic helper duties and responsibilities in the UAE are not decided informally between a household and the person they hire. They are set by federal law, written into the employment contract, and enforced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE). Get the assignment wrong, cleaning duties piled onto a nanny's contract, or a driver asked to run full housekeeping, and you risk a contract dispute, not just an unhappy household.

Whether you already have domestic helper duties and responsibilities loosely agreed with your household staff, or you are drafting a job description before your first hire, the sections below walk through the legal frame first, then the practical task lists by role.

What UAE Law Says About Domestic Helper Duties

The starting point for any domestic helper duties and responsibilities discussion is Federal Law No. 10 of 2017 on Domestic Workers, updated by Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022. This is the law that governs every maid, nanny, cook, driver, and housekeeper working in a private UAE household, and it sets limits that no private agreement between a family and a worker can override.

Article 15 requires the employer to give the worker a copy of her signed employment contract within 10 days of signing. That contract has to state her job title and duties of a domestic helper specifically enough that both sides know what is and is not included. A vague contract that just says "domestic work" gives a family less legal footing if a dispute over duties comes up later, not more.

The law also sets working conditions that apply regardless of role: a domestic worker must be between 18 and 60 years old, is entitled to at least 12 hours of daily rest with 8 of those hours continuous, gets one full rest day per week, and receives 30 days of paid annual leave after completing a year of service. Health insurance is the employer's legal responsibility, not optional, and so is covering the cost of a repatriation ticket at the end of the contract.

Wages are protected too. MOHRE's Wage Protection System (WPS) for domestic workers, announced April 13, 2023, requires salaries to be paid on time through a registered banking channel, closing a gap where cash payment could go undocumented. Every work permit also carries a MOHRE fee of AED 100 (AED 50 federal plus AED 50 service), which covers the permit itself and is separate from any recruitment or visa cost.

Tadbeer centers are the government-licensed service centers that sit between families and this legal framework in practice, handling contract registration, complaint mediation, and, for households that use the agency-visa route, the recruitment process itself. Whether you hire directly or through an agency, the underlying legal duties of a domestic worker and the protections attached to them do not change. Domestic worker duties and the rest, wage, and insurance rules attached to them stay identical whether the household went direct or through an agency-visa route.

House Maid Duties: What You Can Assign

House maid duties are one part of the wider domestic helper duties and responsibilities picture, and this is the area families have the most flexibility to define, as long as it stays inside the role the worker was hired and registered for.

Standard house maid duties include cleaning bedrooms, bathrooms, and living areas, sweeping and mopping floors, dusting, washing dishes, laundry and ironing, and keeping the kitchen and common areas tidy. Many contracts also cover basic organization tasks, maintaining a grocery list, tidying wardrobes and storage, and simple household administration like receiving deliveries.

Where families run into trouble is treating this list as infinitely expandable. Duties of a housemaid can reasonably include everything above, but a housemaid hired specifically for cleaning cannot be assigned full-time childcare, cooking for a large family, or driving duties without that being added to her contract and, in most cases, without her agreement. This is a common source of complaints handled by Tadbeer centers: a worker hired for one set of duties of domestic helper being expected, over time, to informally absorb someone else's job.

If your household genuinely needs a combined role, cleaning plus some cooking, or cleaning plus light childcare, the fix is straightforward. Write it into the contract from the start as a combined position, rather than layering it on informally after hiring. Duties of domestic helper contracts that are specific from day one create far fewer disputes than ones renegotiated verbally six months in.

Duties of a housemaid are sometimes confused with the broader domestic helper responsibilities a household expects day to day, but the housemaid role itself stays limited to cleaning, laundry, and basic household upkeep, unless additional duties of a housemaid are agreed and added to the contract. Duties of domestic helper roles more generally follow the same rule: what is written is what can be assigned.

Domestic Helper Duties and Responsibilities by Role: Maid, Nanny, Cook, Driver, Housekeeper

Domestic helper duties and responsibilities look different depending on the specific role a household is hiring for. Combining roles is common in the UAE, particularly in smaller households, but each role has a distinct core.

• Maid or housekeeper. Cleaning, laundry, ironing, kitchen maintenance, and general household tidiness, as covered in the house maid duties section above. This is the most commonly hired role on ChooseMaid.
• Nanny. Childcare is the core duty: feeding, bathing, supervising play, school pickup and drop-off, and helping with homework for older children. A nanny's contract should specify whether any light housekeeping tied directly to the child, tidying the nursery, washing children's clothes, is included, since childcare and full house cleaning are legally distinct roles.
• Cook. Meal planning and preparation according to the family's dietary needs and cuisine preference, kitchen cleanliness, and managing food storage. Some households combine cook and housekeeping duties in one contract, which is legal as long as both are explicitly listed.
• Driver. School runs, grocery and errand transport, and family outings. A driver's role is transport-specific and should not be assumed to include cleaning or childcare beyond supervising children during the drive itself.
• Housekeeper (senior or estate role). In larger households, a housekeeper may oversee other staff, manage household inventory, and coordinate schedules, in addition to core cleaning duties. This is a more senior version of the maid role rather than a separate legal category.

Some households search specifically for housemaid nanny duties and responsibilities together because they want one person covering both cleaning and childcare. This is legal and common, but it needs to be one clearly combined job description rather than a maid quietly picking up childcare, or a nanny quietly picking up full cleaning duties, without the contract reflecting it. If you are hiring for a combined housemaid nanny duties and responsibilities role, list both sets of tasks explicitly and be realistic about hours, since childcare and full-time cleaning together is a heavier daily workload than either role alone. Whichever combination of duties of a housemaid and childcare a household needs, housemaid nanny duties and responsibilities should read as a single job description, not two overlapping ones.

In short, duties of a domestic helper are role-specific by design. A domestic worker's duties are whatever her contract names, whether that is a single role or a documented combination, and housemaid nanny duties and responsibilities are simply the most common combination UAE households ask about. Duties of domestic helper contracts written this way, one role or a named combination, are what hold up if a dispute over domestic helper responsibilities ever reaches MOHRE or a Tadbeer center.

What You Cannot Legally Ask a Domestic Helper to Do

Domestic helper duties and responsibilities have hard limits that apply no matter what a private agreement between a family and a worker says.

• You cannot withhold a worker's passport. Passport confiscation is a documented labor violation in the UAE and grounds for a MOHRE complaint, regardless of any informal justification given at hiring.
• You cannot deny the legally required rest periods, the 12-hour daily rest, the 8 continuous hours within it, or the one paid rest day per week, even if the household considers the workload light.
• You cannot reassign a worker to a different household or lend her out to family or friends. Her contract is with the employer of record, not a transferable arrangement.
• You cannot skip health insurance or leave the cost of a work-related injury or repatriation to the worker. Both are the employer's legal responsibility under Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022.
• You cannot expand her role beyond what her contract and work permit cover without a formal amendment. A driver cannot be required to do full-time cleaning, a nanny cannot be required to run a full commercial-scale kitchen, and a maid cannot be assigned unsupervised full-time childcare, unless that specific duty is added to the contract with her agreement.

Any of these gives a domestic worker legal grounds to raise a complaint through MOHRE or her nearest Tadbeer center, and can put the sponsoring employer's own status at risk. These limits on domestic worker duties exist to protect both the worker and the household, and no household policy can override them.

Domestic Helper Job Description: Sample Contract Language

A clear domestic helper job description does more to prevent disputes than any verbal conversation on move-in day. Below is sample language you can adapt into your own contract or household handbook, alongside the MOHRE standard employment contract.

This domestic helper job description structure works whether you are hiring your first maid or formalizing an existing informal arrangement, and it applies just as well to house maid duties alone as it does to a combined role. Getting domestic helper duties and responsibilities specific in writing, not just discussed verbally, is what most Tadbeer centers and MOHRE case officers look for first when a dispute over duties comes up.

Live-In vs Live-Out: How Duties Differ

Whether a domestic worker is live-in or live-out changes some practical duties, even though the underlying legal protections are identical either way.

A live-in domestic helper's duties and responsibilities often extend slightly later into the evening, since she is already present in the home, though the same 12-hour rest requirement still applies. A live-out arrangement is usually a fixed block of hours with a clear start and end, which some families prefer because it keeps the working day contained.

Neither arrangement changes what duties can legally be assigned. Cleaning duties for a maid stay cleaning duties whether she lives in or out, and duties of domestic helper roles more broadly, nanny, cook, or driver, follow the same rule. What changes is scheduling flexibility and, often, the cash salary, since live-in roles typically offset part of the wage with housing and food. Domestic worker duties themselves are set by the contract, not by the living arrangement.

Setting Expectations in the First Week

Even a well-written domestic helper job description benefits from a proper first week. Walk through the specific duties of a domestic helper in your household in person on day one rather than assuming the written contract alone will cover it: house layout, cleaning product locations, family routine, and any house-specific rules.

This is also the point to confirm anything not fully spelled out in the contract, preferred cleaning schedule, specific dietary needs if she also cooks, or school pickup logistics if childcare is part of her role. A short written house rules document, alongside the formal contract, tends to prevent more disagreements than the contract alone.

For a full walkthrough of what to cover on day one, see our essential first-day checklist for a new maid or domestic helper and our guide to setting house rules for a new domestic worker. Getting duties of a domestic helper right in week one, whether that means house maid duties, childcare, or a combined role, is far easier than renegotiating domestic helper responsibilities three months into an unclear arrangement.

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Putting a Clear Domestic Helper Job Description in Place

Domestic helper duties and responsibilities in the UAE start with the law, not a verbal agreement, and a specific, well-written contract protects both the household and the worker. Whether you are hiring a maid, nanny, cook, driver, or a combined role, name the duties specifically, respect the legal rest periods and protections, and put it all in writing within the 10-day window Article 15 requires.

If you are hiring your first domestic helper or replacing one, ChooseMaid connects you directly with verified maids, nannies, cooks, and drivers in the UAE for a flat AED 195 monthly subscription. That fee is contact access only, not a salary, placement fee, or visa cost, whether you are looking for house maid duties, childcare, or a combined role. Browse the domestic workers hub to see verified profiles and start a conversation directly.

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Disclaimer: This guide summarizes Federal Law No. 10 of 2017 on Domestic Workers as amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2022, and general MOHRE and Tadbeer practice, as of September 2026. It is general information, not legal advice. Confirm current requirements with MOHRE or your nearest Tadbeer center, and check the ChooseMaid Pricing page for current subscription terms before quoting exact figures.