AFP's unpaid superannuation bill reaches $79m as frustrations grow

About 9000 people identified as potentially affected by a bungle leaving staff without superannuation on their allowances are still waiting to learn whether the federal police owes them missing payments.

The AFP said in a letter to the group this month that 395 of the 9300 current and former staff possibly missing superannuation had been told whether they were owed, while the reviews of another 4800 had been quality assured.

A backlog had formed at the agency overseeing public service superannuation schemes, the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, as it tried processing more than 1200 cases for review, the federal police's chief financial officer Tarnya Gersbach wrote.

The AFP first told staff of the glitch in late 2018, after the agency omitted some allowances after they became eligible for superannuation calculations under a change in an enterprise agreement.

The federal police estimates it owes $78.7 million, a figure that increases with each year of accrual for current AFP members.

Ms Gersbach in her letter this month said the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation had received 1275 cases for review and that it would have to process 50 per cent of members' information manually.

The bespoke, manual processing was needed when cases involved family law splits, linked records, deceased estates, transfers to other agencies, or when a benefit had been already paid.

"The manual process undertaken by the CSC takes an average of approximately a day per member to complete the manual calculation and associated review," she wrote.

Frustrations have grown among the affected members amid the delays in correcting the superannuation bungle.

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Ms Gersbach wrote that members of the AFP's team overseeing the project to rectify the mistake had received upsetting messages.

"We appreciate it is frustrating having to wait for your review to be completed - the project has been under way for some time," she said.

"We also understand the uncertainty is impacting members."

Ms Gerbach also said AFP management would be notified of inappropriate or rude messages.

The president of the Australian Federal Police Association, Alex Caruana, said the union shared the frustration of members who had waited years for the problem to be resolved.

"It's something that should not have happened in the first place," he said.

"A system should have been in place to expedite a solution when the problem was discovered."

An AFP spokesperson said: "The process is complex and is being addressed in a methodical way to ensure the adjustments are correct."

The complex matter stems from the terms of a 2007 enterprise agreement, which expanded the types of employee allowances that were eligible for superannuation purposes.