THE Fiji National Provident Fund has given an assurance that all payments owed to pensioners who validated and chose a pension option before February 29 will be paid out by tomorrow morning.
In a statement issued on Friday afternoon, the fund sought again to allay the concerns of pensioners who turned up earlier in the day only to return home disappointed that they did not receive their payments.
"I would like to extend our deepest apologies to all pensioners for the delay caused by process problems encountered over the last few days," said fund CEO Aisake Taito.
"We plead with our pensioners for their understanding and at the same time, acknowledge them for their patience. We have deployed and will continue to assign critical resources to ensure that the remaining pensioners are paid over the weekend," he said.
Mr Taito confirmed that 90 per cent of the payments were deposited into the banks yesterday with the remaining payments "to be made in the weekend".
He said the FNPF continued to place "a high priority" on payments to pensioners under the newage-based pension scheme.
Mr Taito said FNPF officers had to manually process all pension folders and ensure appropriate clearances were obtained to mitigate all possible risks associated with manual payments before they were released.
He said the FNPF had made arrangements with commercial banks to receive and update payments into pensioners' accounts on Friday night and into the weekend.
"We also would like to acknowledge the goodwill extended by the banks in ensuring the timely updates to our pensioners' accounts," Mr Taito said.
On the pensioners who chose their pension options after February 29, Mr Taito said the Fund would ensure they received their payment "without delay" on April 30.