Your leave entitlement Malaysia lives in an HR handbook nobody has read against the statute behind it. Alamak, the handbook is usually right — but the floor underneath it is what decides things when somebody disagrees, and that floor is shorter to read than the handbook. Three sections of the Employment Act 1955, one table from the Labour Department, and you have all of it.
The three are section 60E for annual leave, section 60F for sick leave and hospitalisation leave, and section 60D for paid public holidays, all of them in Part XII. This page is Peninsular Malaysia and the Federal Territory of Labuan, because that is where the Act applies; Sabah and Sarawak have their own ordinances and their own numbers, and they get a section at the end.
Quick Answer: 8, 12 or 16 days of annual leave and 14, 18 or 22 days of sick leave a year depending on how long you have been with the same employer, 60 more days if hospitalisation is necessary, and 11 paid gazetted public holidays of which 5 are fixed by the Act.
- The thing most people get wrong: the RM 4,000 line does not touch any of this. It takes away certain rates of pay, not your leave.
- The second thing: hospitalisation leave is a separate pot, not a slice of your ordinary sick leave. Since 2023 the two are added, not shared.
- The deadline nobody diarises: annual leave lapses 12 months after the end of the 12 months it accrued on — not on 31 December.
Table of Contents
The wage lineAnnual leaveUse or loseWhat the RM 4,000 line does not reach
Start here, because this is the assumption that quietly wrecks the rest. Since 1 January 2023, First Schedule paragraph 1 covers any person who has entered into a contract of service, with no wage ceiling. Paragraph 1A then puts one line back: for a person whose wages exceed RM 4,000 a month, five sets of provisions stop applying — subsections 60(3), 60A(3), 60C(2A), 60D(3) and 60D(4), and section 60J.
Read that column for what is not in it. Section 60E is not there. Section 60F is not there. Subsection 60D(1) — the entitlement to paid public holidays itself — is not there either. The line takes away rest-day pay, the overtime rate, the shift allowance power, the extra pay for working a public holiday and termination benefits. It does not take away a day of leave, and JTKSM’s own labour-case page lists the same five things with no leave entitlement among them.
Two details go with it. The wages tested exclude commissions, subsistence allowance and overtime payment, so a payslip total above RM 4,000 does not settle the question. And paragraph 2 keeps the whole Act applying irrespective of the amount of wages to manual workers, to anyone operating a vehicle carrying passengers or goods for reward, and to anyone supervising manual workers throughout their work. On the pay side of that line, see 👉 Overtime Pay Calculation Malaysia: Rates and Caps.
Two groups the sections genuinely do not reach: a domestic employee, for whom the First Schedule disapplies 60D, 60E and 60F outright, and a person engaged in a vessel registered in Malaysia who meets the three conditions in paragraph 2(4), for whom the whole of Part XII is switched off.
Annual leave: 8, 12 or 16 days, and the part-year formula
Subsection 60E(1) sets three bands, and the clock that matters is service with the same employer: 8 days for every twelve months of continuous service if you have been employed for less than two years, 12 days at two years or more but less than five, and 16 days at five years or more. Changing jobs restarts the ladder at the bottom, whatever your total years of working life say.
For a part year the Act gives a formula rather than a convention. Where twelve months of continuous service have not been completed in the year the contract of service terminates, the entitlement is in direct proportion to the number of completed months of service — completed months, so a part month contributes nothing. Then the rounding proviso: under one-half of a day is disregarded, one-half or more is deemed a full day. Seven completed months on the 8-day band is 8 × 7 ÷ 12 = 4.67, which rounds to 5 days.
Two provisos sit either side of that. Annual leave is in addition to rest days and paid holidays, so it cannot be absorbed into either. And it can be lost: absence without permission and without reasonable excuse for more than 10 per cent of the working days in the twelve months it accrues on removes it. Separately, unpaid leave exceeding 30 days in aggregate in any twelve months is disregarded when computing length of service under section 60E — which can push you down a band.
Use it or lose it: the 12-month clock
Subsection 60E(2) is short and it is the one worth diarising. The employer shall grant and the employee shall take the leave not later than 12 months after the end of every twelve months of continuous service, and whoever fails to take it then ceases to be entitled to it. Note what that is not: a calendar-year deadline. The window runs from your own service anniversary, so a policy that wipes the balance on 31 December is running a different clock from the Act’s.
Cashing out while still employed has one statutory route, and it opens only from the employer’s side: the proviso gives payment in lieu where, at the request of his employer, the employee agrees in writing not to avail himself of any or all of his annual leave. An employee asking to be paid instead of taking the days is not what it describes.
At the end of a job the rules change twice. Subsection 60E(2A) overrides the lapse: on termination you may take, before it takes effect, the leave due for the preceding twelve months plus the leave accrued for the completed months of the current year. Subsection 60E(3A) says that where the contract has been terminated by either party before the leave was taken, the employer pays the ordinary rate of pay for every day of it — one exception, a dismissal under paragraph 14(1)(a). Offsetting leave against a notice period is a separate question: see 👉 Resignation Letter Malaysia: Notice Period Rules & Template.
Sick leave: 14, 18 or 22 days, plus 60 if you are hospitalised
Sick leave runs on the calendar year, not your service anniversary, and on the same three bands. Where no hospitalisation is necessary, paragraph 60F(1)(aa) gives 14 days in the aggregate in each calendar year under two years of service, 18 days at two years or more but less than five, and 22 days at five years or more. Paragraph (bb) adds 60 days in the aggregate each calendar year where hospitalisation is necessary, as certified.
Those are two pots, not one. Before 2023 they shared a single ceiling; the 2022 amendment separated them, and JTKSM publishes the arithmetic in its own FAQ: paid sick leave rose from 60 days a year to 74 to 82 days depending on length of service. A proviso covers the case where no bed was available — an employee certified ill enough to need hospitalisation but not hospitalised for any reason whatsoever is deemed hospitalised for the purposes of the section.
| Service with the same employer | Annual leave, per 12 months | Sick leave, per calendar year | Hospitalisation leave | Total paid sick days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Less than 2 years | 8 days | 14 days | 60 days | 74 days |
| 2 years or more, under 5 | 12 days | 18 days | 60 days | 78 days |
| 5 years or more | 16 days | 22 days | 60 days | 82 days |
The MC rules: who examines you, and the 48-hour clock
The entitlement is triggered by an examination at the expense of the employer, and the Act names who may do it in two limbs. Paragraph 60F(1)(a) is a registered medical practitioner duly appointed by the employer — the panel clinic. Paragraph (b) opens the door to any other registered medical practitioner or a medical officer in two situations: where none is appointed at all, or where, having regard to the nature or circumstances of the illness, the appointed practitioner’s services are not obtainable within a reasonable time or distance.
A dental surgeon as defined in the Dental Act 1971 counts too, under subsection 60F(1A) — but the proviso makes that entitlement inclusive of the days already in paragraphs (1)(aa) and (bb). A dental certificate draws on the same pot, it does not open a new one.
Then the clock. Subsection 60F(2) deems you absent without permission and without reasonable excuse in two cases: where the sick leave is not certified at all, and where it is certified but you did not inform, or attempt to inform, your employer within 48 hours of it starting. Informing or attempting to inform is a lower bar than getting through — but it is a bar, and being deemed absent without permission bites twice, because that is the same phrase the annual leave forfeiture proviso uses.
Sick leave is paid at the ordinary rate of pay, with the same deemed-received rule for monthly-rated employees. And under subsection 60F(4) there is no paid sick leave for a period in which you are entitled to maternity allowance under Part IX, or receiving compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1952 or periodical payments for temporary disablement under the Employees Social Security Act 1969.
Public holidays: 11 a year, and only five are fixed
Subsection 60D(1)(a) entitles every employee to a paid holiday at the ordinary rate of pay on 11 of the gazetted public holidays in any one calendar year, 5 of them named by the Act: the National Day, the Birthday of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Birthday of the Ruler or the Yang di-Pertua Negeri of the State where you wholly or mainly work (or Federal Territory Day if you work mainly there), the Workers’ Day, and Malaysia Day. Paragraph (b) adds any day appointed for that particular year under section 8 of the Holidays Act 1951.
The other 6 are chosen, and a duty most employees never see enforced comes with them: before the start of each calendar year the employer must exhibit conspicuously at the place of employment a notice specifying which remaining six his employees are entitled to. Other days may be substituted for one or more of those six only by agreement. For which dates fall where in a given year, see 👉 Public Holidays Malaysia 2026: Full List & Long Weekends.
Three provisos then protect the day rather than the date. A holiday falling on a rest day, or on another public holiday, makes the immediately following working day a paid holiday in substitution. One falling inside sick leave or annual leave you are entitled to under the Act — or inside temporary disablement under the two compensation statutes — obliges the employer to grant another day in substitution. And a monthly-rated employee is deemed to have received holiday pay if the month’s wages arrive without abatement for it.
One trap runs the other way. Under subsection 60D(2), absenting yourself on the working day immediately before or immediately after a public holiday — or a run of consecutive ones — without your employer’s prior consent costs the holiday pay for it, unless you have a reasonable excuse. Being made to work one pays 2 days‘ wages at the ordinary rate on top of the holiday pay, under a different subsection, and that is one of the things the RM 4,000 line removes.
Three kinds of leave the Act never mentions
Read all 127 pages of the Act 265 updated text and the phrases emergency leave and compassionate leave do not appear once. Neither does carry forward. They are real, they are common, and plenty of Malaysian contracts provide them — but those names are contractual, not statutory. Replacement leave is a separate case: the Act does not use that term, but subsection 60D(1)’s proviso and subsection 60D(1B) already give a statutory substitute holiday when a public holiday falls on a rest day or inside leave you are entitled to — the mechanism exists, only the label differs. What the Act itself provides is a short list: sections 60E, 60F and 60D, plus maternity leave in Part IX and paternity leave in section 60FA, the last two having their own conditions and covered in full in our maternity and paternity leave guide, so no figure for either is printed here.
One adjacent answer is worth having in writing, because flexible working made people nervous about it. JTKSM was asked whether an employer may stop granting rest days or annual leave once a flexible working arrangement is approved. The answer was no — a flexible working arrangement remains subject to Part XII of the Act.
If the leave is refused, or the pay does not come
The Act treats both failures as offences. Under subsection 100(4), an employer who fails to grant annual leave or any part of it commits an offence and, on conviction, is also ordered to pay the ordinary rate of pay for every day not granted — in addition to the wages payable for work actually done on those days. Subsection 100(5) does the same for sick leave, and subsection 100(3) for wages due under section 60D. Where the Act specifies no penalty, section 99A sets a fine not exceeding RM 50,000.
There are two doors at the Labour Department, and they are not the same door. A complaint about a breach of the terms and conditions of service goes in by letter, by e-mail, through the SISPAA public complaints system, through the Working for Workers app, or in person at the nearest Labour Office — with your full particulars, the employer’s particulars, the issues, and copies of the appointment letter or contract of service and recent payslips.
A labour case is the money claim itself, heard in the Labour Court under section 69, and JTKSM’s own list of claim types names an annual leave balance outright. Three things before you go. You must attend in person at the Labour Office nearest your place of employment — file where you live and the case is still handled where you work. There is no filing fee. And the office fixes a mention date first, where a consent order can issue if both sides agree; failing that it goes to a hearing, with an appeal to the High Court within 14 days of the order. Whether any of it applies to your own facts is for the department to decide, not a web page.
Sabah and Sarawak: different ordinances, different holiday counts
Nothing above is Sabah or Sarawak law. JTKSM says so directly: the 2022 amendments apply only in Peninsular Malaysia and the Federal Territory of Labuan, while Sabah runs on the Labour Ordinance (Sabah) Chapter 67 and Sarawak on the Labour Ordinance (Sarawak) Chapter 76. Both were overhauled in 2025 and both sets of changes commenced on 1 May 2025, except Part IVA — Sabah by Act A1753, Sarawak by Act A1754.
Sick leave landed in the same place across all three. Public holidays did not, and that is the difference worth carrying: the peninsular figure is the lowest of the three.
| Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan | Sabah | Sarawak | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gazetted public holidays | 11 days, 5 fixed by statute | 15 days, 5 fixed | 18 days, 6 fixed |
| Sick leave, by service band | 14 days / 18 days / 22 days | 14 days / 18 days / 22 days | 14 days / 18 days / 22 days |
| Hospitalisation leave | 60 days | 60 days | 60 days |
| Annual leave, by service band | 8 days / 12 days / 16 days | Not published officially | 8 days / 12 days / 16 days |
| In force | 1 January 2023 | 1 May 2025 | 1 May 2025 |
Two Sarawak specifics have no peninsular equivalent. Its six non-substitutable days are the National Day, the Workers’ Day, the Birthday of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Birthday of the Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Sarawak, Malaysia Day and Sarawak Independence Day, and its English FAQ describes the remaining twelve as rest holidays determined by employees’ respective religions and beliefs. Failure to pay sick leave wages there is an offence under section 130K(5) of that Ordinance, not section 100 of the Act. Go to the source: Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sabah and Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sarawak.
Walaoeh Verdict
Write down three dates, not three numbers. Your service anniversary with this employer, because that moves you between the 8, 12 and 16-day bands and starts the 12-month window in subsection 60E(2). The date each year’s entitlement therefore expires. And 1 January, when the sick leave counters reset and the employer’s public holiday notice for the year should already be up.
The figure worth checking against your handbook is not the number of days — most employers meet or beat the floor — it is the lapse rule. A policy clearing the balance on 31 December measures from a different point than section 60E(2) does, and that gap is where days quietly disappear. All three kinds of leave are paid at the ordinary rate of pay, which for a monthly-paid employee is the monthly rate divided by 26 👉 Overtime Pay Calculation Malaysia: Rates and Caps.
Two things we deliberately did not print. Any limitation period for a leave claim: section 69 states none and none appears on the JTKSM pages, which is not the same as there being no time limit. And Sabah’s annual leave days, for the reason in the caption above. If a figure matters to a decision you are about to make, confirm it with the Labour Office first.
Frequently Asked Questions
I earn more than RM 4,000 a month. Do I still get annual leave and sick leave?
Yes. First Schedule paragraph 1A disapplies subsections 60(3), 60A(3), 60C(2A), 60D(3) and 60D(4), and section 60J, to a person whose wages exceed RM 4,000 a month. Sections 60E and 60F are not on that list, and neither is subsection 60D(1). What you lose above the line is rest-day pay, the statutory overtime rate, the shift allowance power, the extra pay for being made to work a public holiday, and termination benefits — not the leave itself and not the 11 paid public holidays. Two qualifications. The wages tested exclude commissions, subsistence allowance and overtime payment. And paragraph 2 keeps the whole Act applying irrespective of the amount of wages to manual workers, to people operating vehicles carrying passengers or goods for reward, and to supervisors of manual workers.
My company clears unused annual leave every 31 December. Is that the rule?
That is a policy, and it runs on a different clock from the Act’s. Subsection 60E(2) says the employer shall grant and the employee shall take the leave not later than 12 months after the end of every twelve months of continuous service, and an employee who fails to take it then ceases to be entitled to it. The period it measures from is your own twelve months of continuous service, not the calendar. Two other routes exist. The proviso to subsection 60E(2) allows payment in lieu, but only where the employer requests it and the employee agrees in writing. And subsection 60E(2A) overrides the lapse on termination: you may take, before the termination takes effect, the leave due for the preceding twelve months plus the leave accrued for the completed months of the current year. Whether a particular policy is compliant turns on facts a web page cannot see — the Labour Office is where that gets decided.
I went to a clinic that is not on the company panel. Does the MC still count?
The Act sets two limbs rather than a yes or no. Paragraph 60F(1)(a) is a registered medical practitioner duly appointed by the employer. Paragraph 60F(1)(b) allows any other registered medical practitioner or a medical officer where no such practitioner is appointed, or where, having regard to the nature or circumstances of the illness, the appointed practitioner’s services are not obtainable within a reasonable time or distance. So the question is which limb your situation falls under, and that is a question of fact. Two things apply either way: the examination is at the expense of the employer, and under subsection 60F(2) you must inform or attempt to inform the employer within 48 hours of the sick leave starting, or you are deemed absent without permission. A dental surgeon’s certificate counts under subsection 60F(1A), but inclusive of the same day counts, not on top.
I was hospitalised. Does that eat into my 14 days of ordinary sick leave?
No. Paragraph 60F(1)(aa) covers sick leave where no hospitalisation is necessary — 14 days, 18 days or 22 days a calendar year by service band. Paragraph (bb) separately gives 60 days in the aggregate in each calendar year where hospitalisation is necessary. They were deliberately separated in the 2022 amendment, and JTKSM publishes the combined totals in its own table: 74 days with less than two years of service, 78 days with two years or more but less than five years, and 82 days with five years or more. One proviso is easy to miss: an employee certified ill enough to need to be hospitalised but not hospitalised for any reason whatsoever is deemed to be hospitalised for the purposes of the section.
A public holiday fell on my rest day. Do I just lose it?
No. The proviso to subsection 60D(1) says that where one of those public holidays falls on a rest day, or on another public holiday, the working day following immediately becomes a paid holiday in substitution. Subsection 60D(1B) does the same job for a holiday that lands inside sick leave or annual leave you are entitled to under the Act, or inside a period of temporary disablement under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1952 or the Employees Social Security Act 1969 — the employer shall grant another day as a paid holiday in substitution. The rule that runs the other way is subsection 60D(2): absenting yourself on the working day immediately before or immediately after a public holiday without your employer’s prior consent costs you the holiday pay for it, unless you have a reasonable excuse.
Sources
Every figure above comes from one of these, all checked on 14 September 2026.
- Laws of Malaysia, Act 265 — Employment Act 1955, updated text as at 1 January 2023, hosted by JTKSM. Sections 1, 2, 60D, 60E, 60F, 60FA, 60I, 69, 99A, 100 and the First Schedule.
- JTKSM — Employment Act 1955 (Amendment) 2022 FAQ. The department’s own sick leave table (14, 18 or 22 plus 60, totalling 74, 78 or 82), the reason the two were separated, the RM 4,000 statement, and the flexible working answer on annual leave.
- JTKSM — Kes Buruh, Labour Case FAQ and Aduan. The RM 4,000 exclusion in plain terms, an annual leave balance as a claim type, no filing fee, where to file, what to bring, the process and the 14-day appeal.
- Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sabah — Act A1753, P.U. (B) 166 and the department’s FAQ. Sabah’s fifteen gazetted public holidays, its First Schedule, its sick leave table and the 1 May 2025 commencement.
- Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sarawak — Act A1754, P.U. (B) 165, its English FAQ and its before-and-after infographic. Sarawak’s eighteen public holidays and the six non-substitutable ones, its annual and sick leave figures, section 130K(5), and the same 1 May 2025 commencement.
About this guide. Put together by an independent Malaysian who reads the gazetted text rather than the summaries of it, and re-checked against those sources on a schedule. It sets out what the rules say; it is not legal, tax or financial advice, and a leave dispute can turn on facts a web page cannot see — your contract, your service dates, what was actually agreed. Rates, thresholds and forms in Malaysia change. Before you rely on a figure here, confirm it with the Labour Department or a licensed professional.