The Malaysian government announced all initial professional visit pass applications will now require pre-approval from the Department of Labor Peninsular Malaysia online portal.

Key Points:

• Companies registered under the Expatriate Services Division must now obtain pre-approval from the online form all initial professional visit pass applications. This procedure was also recently implemented for initial employment pass applications.
• Renewal applications are not required to obtain pre-approval.

Additional Information: Officials stated that a pre-approval should take one to two business weeks to process. The approval document can be downloaded online within the portal once granted. ESD-registered employers are required to submit the pre-approval with each new application.

BAL Analysis: The government has expanded this process to the initial professional visit pass application to standardize their existing procedures for other employment authorization applications in the hopes of creating faster processing times for applicants and registered companies.