Agartala, Jan 7 (IANS): To pacify its aggrieved employees seeking central pay scales, the Tripura government Wednesday announced an additional five percent dearness allowance for its 209,000 employees and pension holders.

"Despite our severe financial crisis, the government has released additional five percent of DA (dearness allowance) for the employees and pensioners," Tripura finance minister Bhanulal Saha told reporters.

To provide the DA, the additional annual expenditure from the government exchequer would be Rs.158 crore.

"Over 209,000 government employees and pensioners would get the new instalments of DA from this month," the minister said after a cabinet meeting, which was chaired by Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.

The employees and pensioners had been demanding from the state government that their dearness allowance (DA) be equal to that of the central government employees.

With this new installment of DA, the DA of state government employees and pensioners rose to 69 percent while the central government employees are getting the allowance at 107 percent.