ST. LOUIS (AP) — Fifty-five permanently disabled people have not received payments from a Missouri fund for workplace injuries because of its ongoing financial troubles.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday that financial difficulties plaguing the Second Injury Fund prompted the attorney general's office to begin withholding new permanent total disability awards in March. Attorney General Chris Koster estimates that if all the liabilities against the state fund were paid, the fund would be $20 million in debt by the end of the year. Plus, there are 28,000 pending claims against the fund with about 700 new ones filed each month.

Missouri's Second Injury Fund takes businesses off the hook for paying the claims of workers with previous injuries or conditions who are re-injured on the job. It is financed by a surcharge employers pay on their workers' compensation insurance. That surcharge was capped at 3 percent under a 2005 law. Previously, the fee increased and decreased based on a formula created by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Analysts have warned for years the fund was running out of money.