Ernie Wilson fears he may die before receiving payment following his application to the Victims’ Payment Board.
Mr Wilson, who turns 88 later this month, was told he was eligible and the amount just had to be worked out, but that was around two months ago.
On his application, Mr Wilson said: “The last word I got said it was sort of completed and they were going to work out what they are going to give me.
“That was about a couple of months ago and not heard from them since. Not sure what is happening.”
Mr Wilson fears he may die before the money comes through for his main motivation is to leave his family something when he does pass. He is not clear what might then happen as he is seeking a lump sum due to his age.
More than 40 people who applied following the August 2021 opening of the scheme have died, figures released to the BBC reveal. There was one in 2021, 14 in 2022 and 28 last year.
The board received 6,200 application, with decisions made in 955, 625 eligible and 325 ineligible.
Mr Wilson attended hospital on Thursday morning following a check up call following an operation on his hand two weeks ago. It was directly linked to the bombing, the latest operation over the last more than three decades.
“Since I got blown up I have been in pain all the time,” he said.
A school bus driver and part time UDR man, he was carrying 17 children, including later DUP leader Arlene Foster, when an IRA bomb exploded under the vehicle in June 1988 in Lisnaskea.
But the injuries suffered that day, and pain since, were not the only details including his application. His son, James, took his own life a year after the bombing. The 27-year-old blamed himself as he checked the bus for a bomb and did not see the device.
“Well, that broke my heart,” said Mr Wilson, whose wife May died seven years ago.
His motivation for applying to the scheme is to pass on something to his remaining family, including his daughter who looks after him in
“I am not getting any younger and I die before I get it, what will happen then, that’s what I am worried about.”
Kenny Donaldson, of the South East Fermanagh Foundation, which is supporting Mr Wilson, said his organisation has absorbed “significant frustration” from some of the more than 1,100 it is helping.
“We understand the delays are principally around the information gathering process and the nature of responses by other stakeholder agencies who hold the information necessary,” Mr Donaldson said.
Victims’ support group Wave, noting the 10-year fight for legislation, said “time is not on the side of those severely injured a number of decades ago and if appropriate provision had been much sooner then fewer of the very elderly would have died before receiving the payments due to them”.