AGARTALA, July 3 (TIWN): Despite financial crisis, the State Government has decided to give the Dearness Allowance (DA) to its employees from this July with the 44 per cent gap to be lowered, confirmed Finance Minister Bhanulal Saha on Thursday. Refusing to announce the details before the cabinet meeting Saha said that over 2 lakhs government employees and pensioners would get the new installments of DA from this month.

Talking to the reporters here at the civil secretariat Saha said, “The state government would need Rs. 35 crore from this year to provide the DA to the government employees here per year.”

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

At present there are 1 lakhs 4 thousand regular government employees here in the state, whereas there are 10, 000 PSU and 62, 000 under Family Pension, said Saha

However it is to be mentioned here that this year on January the state government despite the financial crises and after several persuasions announced an additional five percent dearness allowance for its 209,000 employees and pension holders.