Direct answer: The PLKS — Pas Lawatan Kerja Sementara, officially the Visitor's Pass (Temporary Employment) — is the permit that actually allows a foreign national to work in Sarawak. It runs for one year, it is renewable subject to compliance, and it cannot be issued until four specific documents exist. The employer is the applicant. The employer is also the one who collects the pass at JIMS.
Updated 30 October 2026 · Official sources: GENESIS — SANSOLS Visitor's Pass (Temporary Employment), SANSOLS e-Service, HAVEN FAQ (genesis.sarawak.gov.my)
Key Facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is it? | Visitor's Pass (Temporary Employment) / Pas Lawatan Kerja Sementara — the work permit itself |
| Who is it for? | Foreign nationals only |
| Which sectors? | Construction · logging · manufacturing · mining/quarrying · plantations · services — six, and only six |
| How long? | 1 year |
| Renewable? | Yes — "subject to compliance with all legal and procedural requirements" |
| Who applies? | The employer. Workers cannot apply for themselves |
| Who collects? | The employer, at JIMS |
| Mandatory documents | 4 — approved AP, approved Labour Licence, source-country fit report, SAFHIS fit report |
| Where is status checked? | ALIANCE |
| Fee published? | No. GENESIS does not publish the PLKS or levy amount |
| Processing time published? | No. |
PLKS is not the Employment Pass — and the mix-up is expensive
Sarawak runs two separate work authorisation tracks, and they get confused constantly.
- Employment Pass (EP) goes through the EXPRT module. It covers non-Sarawakians — including West Malaysians and Sabahans — in professional and skilled roles, with a minimum basic salary of RM3,000.
- PLKS goes through SANSOLS and HAVEN. It covers foreign nationals in six specific sectors.
The dividing line is nationality and sector, not seniority. A Filipino site supervisor on a Sarawak construction project is on PLKS. A Kuala Lumpur engineer is on an EP. Get this wrong at the start and every document you prepare afterwards belongs to the wrong application.
There is a second, more practical difference. An EP is applied for and largely processed online. A PLKS ends with a physical collection at JIMS and a biometric registration the worker must attend in person. That physical tail is where most of the delay actually lives.
The three classifications inside SANSOLS
SANSOLS sorts the workers it handles into three:
- Non-Resident Employee
- General Worker
- Skilled Worker
The classification is not cosmetic. It determines which documents the application demands and which conditions attach to the pass. If you are not certain which one your worker falls under, settle that question before submitting — not after a query comes back.
Foreign Domestic Helpers run on a separate track
Household employment does not go through the general SANSOLS worker flow. It goes through HAVEN, which handles the AP, the PLKS application and the NSIC issuance for domestic helpers.
HAVEN has its own rules and they are strict:
- The employer must be a Sarawakian individual residing in Sarawak, hiring for household purposes.
- The helper must be between 21 and 45 years old.
- Source countries are limited to Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
- One helper per application. You cannot bundle two into one.
- The passport needs at least one year validity — for new applications and renewals alike.
- A rented home is acceptable, but the address on the PLKS must match the actual workplace.
If you move house inside Sarawak, HAVEN's position is explicit: notify the authorities so the record is updated, and at JIMS shorten the existing pass and apply for a new one. You do not carry the old pass to a new address and hope it holds.
Who applies — and who cannot
The applicant is the employer.
Two structural points that catch people out:
Statutory bodies and government agencies cannot use the online system at all. They must submit directly to JIMS. Every step below assumes a private employer.
The employer needs both an individual and a company account on the ALIANCE single sign-on (aliance.sarawak.gov.my), which also runs JobSarawak, SAFHIS and EXPRT. Having only one will not let you submit.
The full chain, in the order the system enforces
Seven steps. The order is fixed.
01 — Hiring Outcome Report (HOR). Advertise the position on JobSarawak and produce the HOR. This is the evidence the vacancy was opened to Sarawakians.
02 — Approval in Principle (AP). Apply in SANSOLS for the state quota approval. Nothing downstream exists without an approved and valid AP.
03 — Labour Licence. Applied for in SANSOLS after the AP is approved.
04 — eVDR. Applied for in SANSOLS before the worker travels, so they can enter.
05 — e-Visa. This one sits outside the system — it is applied for on the MyVISA Portal.
06 — SAFHIS. After arrival, book and complete the medical screening at a panel clinic, through SANSOLS.
07 — NSIC booking. Book the appointment to collect the non-Sarawakian identity card, through SANSOLS.
Then the employer collects the PLKS at JIMS.
Look at the shape of that chain: four separate approvals, one step that lives on an entirely different government portal, and a physical ending. There is no single "submit and wait" moment anywhere in it.
The four documents, without which there is no PLKS
GENESIS lists exactly four. All four, or the pass is not issued:
- Approved and valid Approval in Principle (AP)
- Approved Labour Licence
- Fit Status Medical Screening Report from the source country
- Fit Status Medical Screening Report from SAFHIS
Two of those four are medical reports. That is deliberate, and it is the single most common source of confusion.
Two medicals, not one
The worker is screened twice, in two different countries, and both reports must show a Fit status:
- Source country — completed before departure, in the worker's home country.
- SAFHIS — completed after arrival, in Sarawak, at a panel clinic.
They are not interchangeable and neither substitutes for the other. A worker who arrives with a clean source-country report still has to complete SAFHIS. A worker who has completed SAFHIS still needed the source-country report in order to get here.
The practical failure is a file that contains one report while everyone assumes "the medical" is done. Check which report you are holding before you tell anyone it is finished.
Levy and payment — what is published and what is not
GENESIS does not publish the PLKS fee or the levy amount on the pages that describe the process. It does not publish a processing timeline either.
That matters, because it is exactly where informal numbers start circulating. If someone quotes you a figure, ask which instrument it comes from. We do not print a number here, because we would be inventing it.
What is documented is the sequence: the payment sits inside the chain, and an unpaid item stops progress exactly the way a missing document does.
Collection at JIMS, and the biometric step people forget
The pass is collected at JIMS by the employer.
Before that, the worker must complete biometric registration in person at an Immigration and Labour Integrated Centre (ILC). GENESIS states plainly that workers must be physically present at the selected ILC.
There are five:
- Kuching
- Sibu
- Bintulu
- Miri — Piasau Business Park, Jalan Bulatan Park
- Mukah
A worker who is in Sarawak but has never attended an ILC has not finished. This is the step that turns a paperwork problem into a scheduling problem, because it needs one specific person at one specific centre on one specific day.
Renewal: two different rules, and they are not interchangeable
Read this section carefully. A great deal of what circulates online takes one rule and applies it to everything.
For SANSOLS workers (General / Skilled / Non-Resident Employee): the PLKS is valid for one year and is renewable subject to compliance with all legal and procedural requirements. That is the full extent of what GENESIS publishes. No "apply 90 days before expiry" window is published for this category.
For HAVEN domestic helpers: renewal may be submitted up to ninety (90) days before the PLKS expiry date. That figure comes from the HAVEN FAQ, and it applies to HAVEN.
So if you employ a domestic helper, the 90-day window is documented. If you employ a general or skilled worker, the timing has to be confirmed against the current system and the conditions attached to your approval — do not assume the maid rule carries over.
The safe operating assumption for SANSOLS is the opposite of the maid rule: start early, and confirm the current requirement instead of waiting for a published window that may not exist.
When the employer, the address, or the worker changes
Three changes that need an action, not a note in a file:
Address change. For HAVEN, the PLKS address must match the actual workplace. Moving inside Sarawak means updating the record and, at JIMS, shortening the existing pass and applying for a new one.
Employer change. The pass is tied to the employer who applied. A new employer is a new application, not a transfer.
Worker status change. A renewed passport, a changed job scope, or a worker who leaves — each of these meets a pass with a fixed expiry date and a fixed set of conditions.
Where it actually breaks
Collected from the failures that keep recurring, in roughly the order they appear:
- The Labour Licence is approved and nobody knows the next step is eVDR. The sequence is not obvious from the licence itself.
- SAFHIS was never completed. It is one of the four mandatory documents, and because it happens after arrival it is the easiest one to lose track of.
- The two medical reports get mixed up. A file holding one report is treated as complete.
- The levy or payment step is unclear, so the chain stalls on an unpaid item rather than a missing document.
- The worker is already in Sarawak but the chain is broken at SAFHIS or the NSIC booking.
- Renewal starts too late, on the assumption that a 90-day window exists for every category.
- The employer or the address changed and the pass was never updated.
- Names do not match across documents — passport, AP, Labour Licence, medical reports. One inconsistent spelling is enough to stop a collection.
- The worker never attended an ILC for biometrics.
- The sector is not one of the six. PLKS covers construction, logging, manufacturing, mining/quarrying, plantations and services. Outside those, this is the wrong instrument entirely.
Where AUSVJ actually helps on a PLKS file
We do not submit on your behalf and we do not promise an outcome. Here is what we do on a PLKS case, and where it changes the result.
We check the sector first. Before anything else, we confirm the six-sector list actually covers what your worker will be doing. If it does not, the rest of the file is wasted work — and we say so at that point rather than later.
We map the chain onto your real situation. Four approvals, one step on a different portal, one physical collection, one biometric appointment. We build that as a dated sequence with the dependencies marked, because the failures are almost never "we did not know the rule" — they are "we did step four before step three".
We separate the two medicals on paper. Which report, from which country, showing what status, sitting where in the file. This sounds trivial until a collection is refused over a report that was in a folder the whole time.
We reconcile names and identifiers across the whole set. Passport, AP, Labour Licence, both medical reports. One spelling that differs by a single letter is enough to stop the counter.
We flag the physical constraints early. Which ILC, how far the worker is from it, and whether the biometric appointment is realistically bookable before the pass is needed. That is a calendar problem, and it is far cheaper to solve three weeks out than three days out.
We treat renewal as a category question, not a formula. Helper or worker, HAVEN or SANSOLS, which window actually applies — and then we work backwards from the expiry date instead of forwards from today.
What we do not do: quote a PLKS or levy figure GENESIS has not published, give you a processing time that does not exist in writing, or tell you a requirement can be waived when it cannot.
If you already hold an AP or a Labour Licence and are not sure what comes next, send us the two reference numbers and the worker's sector. We will tell you which step you are actually on.
Frequently asked questions
What does PLKS stand for? Pas Lawatan Kerja Sementara. The official English name is Visitor's Pass (Temporary Employment).
Is a PLKS the same as a work permit? It is the work permit for foreign nationals in six sectors in Sarawak. It is not the same as the Employment Pass, which is a different track for non-Sarawakians including West Malaysians.
How long is it valid? One year.
Can it be renewed? Yes — "subject to compliance with all legal and procedural requirements". No fixed advance window is published for general and skilled workers.
Can a domestic helper be renewed 90 days before expiry? Yes. That window is documented in the HAVEN FAQ and applies to HAVEN domestic helpers. Do not apply it to SANSOLS workers.
Who applies? The employer. Workers cannot apply for themselves. Statutory bodies and government agencies must go directly to JIMS instead of using the online system.
How many documents are mandatory? Four: approved and valid AP, approved Labour Licence, source-country fit report, SAFHIS fit report.
Does the worker need to be in Sarawak? Yes, physically. Biometric registration happens in person at an ILC — Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu, Miri or Mukah.
Where is the pass collected? At JIMS, by the employer.
How much does it cost? GENESIS does not publish the PLKS fee or levy amount. We do not quote a figure we cannot source.
How long does approval take? No official processing timeline is published.
My worker is already here but the process stopped. What now? Identify which of the seven steps was the last one to complete. Everything after that is still open, and the four-document rule still applies.
Need someone to check the sequence before you submit?
Send us three things: the worker's nationality and sector, which step you last completed, and the pass expiry date if there is one. Three lines is enough for us to tell you where the chain is actually broken.
If it is broken, you will hear it from us — not from a counter three weeks later.
Related guides
- Sarawak Work Permit 2026/2027: the complete overview
- SANSOLS: hiring general and skilled foreign workers in Sarawak
- HAVEN: hiring a foreign domestic helper in Sarawak
- eVDR: the entry visa that comes before the pass
- SAFHIS: the medical screening after arrival
- Sarawak Employment Pass via EXPRT: employer and applicant guide
