Agartala, March 31 (IANS): To pacify its aggrieved employees seeking central government pay scales, the Tripura government on Tuesday announced higher pay scales and allowances for its 161,000 employees.

"Despite our severe financial crisis, the government has decided to give higher pay scales to its employees at par with the award of the sixth central pay commission recommendation... except DA (dearness allowance)," Chief Minister Manik Sarkar told reporters.

He said: "Taking into account other unresolved issues, it has been decided to provide the benefit for the purpose of fixation of pay notionally by allowing three percent annual increment with effect from January 2006 and financial benefit from April 2015."

He said that to implement the higher pay scales, Rs.339 crore would be incurred in 2015-16 fiscal and Rs.407-645 crore would be required in the subsequent financial years until 2019-20.

"Without getting sufficient funds from the 14th finance commission, the state government has taken this risky and courageous decision considering the interest of the government employees," he added.

Sarkar said that due to the financial crunch, the state government could not give the dearness allowance to its employees at par with the central government.

Currently, state government employees and pensioners get dearness allowance of 69 percent while the central government employees get 107 percent.