Immigration ban on PTPTN, IRB defaulters lifted with immediate effect

PETALING JAYA: The Immigration Department has lifted the travel ban for all education loan defaulters and tax defaulters effective June 1.
Having cleared some 265,149 defaulters of the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) from its blacklist, the authority said that there is still a balance of 168,289 defaulters in the blacklist, which will be removed by June 15.
However, these remaining defaulters will be allowed to travel as the Immigration in a statement today said that it has informed authorities at all entry points to remove the restriction.
This is following the statement by Education Minister Maszlee Malik on May 24 on the move to remove the blacklisted names.
"The Immigration Department has started removing the names from the blacklist beginning June 1. According to the record, there are 433,706 names of PTPTN borrowers that have been blacklisted since 2000 till May 23, 2018," it said.
Also confirming on the instruction from the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) to lift the travel ban for tax defaulters, it said it has streamlined the blacklist to ensure that all the names in the list will also be removed.
There are to-date a total of 636,202 names in the Immigration travel restriction, which have been blacklisted by several other agencies.