Agartala, July 7: In a bid to revive the sick Tripura State Co-operative Bank (TSCB), the management has sealed payment of dearness allowance, cancelled all leave of employees, including casual leave, and issued a circular making it mandatory for employees to work for nine hours a day.

The latest circular has generated a lot of resentment among the employees. According to the circular, the latest instalment of seven per cent dearness allowance (DA), sanctioned by the state government with effect from April 1 this year has been cancelled. ?The employees of all other regional banks like the Tripura Gramin Bank, the Urban Co-operative Bank and the Land Development Bank have already drawn their DA, but we have been denied what is correctly ours,? said Krishna Kumar Sarkar, secretary of the co-operative bank employees? union.

Santanu Debbarma, general manager of TSCB, said drastic steps had to be taken to in order to deal with the emergency situation. However, he said the measures are just temporary. Currently all the 39 branches of the TSCB have a net deposit of only Rs 213 crore, of which Rs 196 crore had been advanced as loan. ?Unfortunately, Rs 53 crore out of the total loan amount has become non-performing assests (NPAs),? Debbarma said. Over the past few years, accumulation of bad debts such as loans given to sanction government-sponsored poverty alleviation schemes, loans to co-operatives and loans for rehabilitation of militants have lead to the crisis.

?How are we expected to continue with a net capital of just Rs 17 crore? Unless we recover the bad loans and turn our NPAs into performing assets, it will be difficult for us to continue.?

A special drive was being launched to recover the bad loans on the basis of the Public Demand Recovery (PDR) bill passed by the state government.

On the issue of non-payment of seven per cent dearness allowance, he said the amount would be released as soon as possible. ?They will definitely get their dues.?

Exercising caution, Debbarma said the bank is experiencing a financial crunch because it is a state-controlled bank, and therefore, several of the government-dictated programmes have not brought in the necessary profits for the bank.