AGARTALA, July 14 (TIWN): Tripura government on Tuesday announced an additional five percent dearness allowance for its 209,000 employees and pension holders to appease its employees with central pay scales. Talking to the reporters here at the civil secretariat on Tuesday after the cabinet meeting, Finance Minister Bhanulal Saha said, “Despite heavy financial crisis the state government on Tuesday had released additional five per cent Dearness Allowance (DA) for the employees and the pensioners.” Saha said that the 209,000 employees would get the installment of DA from this July 1, 2015. To provide the DA, the additional annual expenditure from the government exchequer would be Rs.162.5 crores whereas the state government would need Rs. 108.33 crores for 8 months. 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 74 per cent while the central government employees are getting the allowance at 113 per cent with 39 per cent gapping.