FNPF pays out more than $136 million for COVID-19 relief

The Fiji National Provident Fund has now paid more than $136 million to 177,000 members under the COVID-19 withdrawal scheme relief to-date.

FNPF says this payout includes $43.7 million Government top-up.

Affected members withdrew a total of $92.3 million from their FNPF accounts.

Chief Executive Officer Jaoji Koroi says the Fund has continued to facilitate relief payments for members who have been affected by the economic impact of the health pandemic.

Koroi says it has been seven months since FNPF activated the COVID-19 withdrawal scheme in partnership with Government.

To date, there are seven withdrawal phases – four have been completed, while three are ongoing.

For Phase 2, the Fund has automatically registered 27,815 members who had earlier consented to future assistance without the need to re-apply since the last payment on Tuesday, 27th October 2020.

This is for people who are on leave without pay or reduced hours due to the pandemic.

However, for those that did not agree to the continued assistance under Phase 2 of COVID-19, they will need to re-apply similar to members who are applying for the first time.

The first payment cycle for Phase 2 Round 3 is on Tuesday, 10th November 2020.

For Phase 3, the Fund has continued to assist workers who were on reduced pay or hours from their last payment on Tuesday, 20th October 2020. The first payment cycle for Phase 3 Round 2 was disbursed to 11,799 members earlier this week.

A total of $3.9 million was paid with $1.4 million topped up by Government.

Unlike those in phase 2, members are reminded that they need to re-apply for this phase through their employers.

There will be a special payment run today for around 300 members who had missed the final payment for Phase 3 Round 1 and members who applied for Phase 3 Round 2 before the deadline on Thursday, 29th October 2020, but missed this week’s payment.

FNPF says a technical issue affected the processing of these members’ applications and resulted in their exclusion from Tuesday’s payment.

A total of $4.72 million has been paid to-date to 6,449 members in Phase 4.

This phase is for those who have been unemployed from January 2013 to September 2019.

Members can only apply once for this relief phase and there is no Government top-up.

This phase is for those members who are not in the COVID-19 impacted period, which means that they would have been unemployed before the pandemic period.

Source: FNPF