RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Employment Commission said that it began processing payments from a federal assitance program on Thursday, but added it may take between one to three business days for people to start seeing the money in their account.
FEMA's Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program ran for six weeks in Virginia between August and September and offered up to $300 a week for those who qualified, meaning up to $1800 for those who qualified for every week.
The money was initially supposed to be sent out on September 30, but that date was pushed back to October 15 due to a programming error.
Joyce Fogg, the communications manager for VEC, said they are processing $481-million for around 389,000 people and the time of receipt would depend on where it is being sent.
"$481 million that has to be processed by the banks, and posted into the individual accounts at the banks. And then some people get theirs by debit card. So, we have a third party vendor that those funds are released to and they place those on debit cards and that usually takes a little bit longer than the bank processing," said Fogg. "But, they should expect their payments to be there. Some will probably receive them tomorrow morning and then it may take two to three days for the others."
Fogg said VEC was trying to process the payments earlier but that plan was delayed by a federal holiday and construction accident in Chester.
"Monday was the holiday and that usually backs that week's payments up by a day. And, of course, our agency was still working on Monday. But, the banks were closed," said Fogg. "And then, Tuesday, with the fiber optic cable that was down with VITA that put us another whole day behind because we had run our weekly benefits on Monday night and they were delayed. So, we had to wait until those ran before we could run the LWA."
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