AHMEDABAD, Feb 3 — With the Gujarat government having failed to deal with the marauding earthquake of January 26 in time, help has finally begun to reach the interiors of the worst-affected Kutch district on the ninth day.

Even as the wait for relief in the devastated villages of the sprawling Kutch district has been dreadfully painful and slow, the affected in the backward Saurashtra district are seething with anger. They feel that they are being shortchanged for no fault of theirs.

There is a stark contrast in desperately needed aid being dispatched to Bhuj and other parts of Kutch district compared to Rajkot and the adjoining rural areas in Saurashtra which have also suffered the severity of the earthquake, though on a comparatively lesser scale.

Gujarat Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel held a meeting in Gandhinagar today to review the situation in Kutch district. The District Collector of Bhuj was summarily transferred out as he was found wanting in coordinating relief efforts in the face of the gargantuan death and destruction.

International organisations have rapped the Keshubhai Patel government for having failed to activate and get the administration cracking, leading to valuable loss of time which might have facilitated in saving more precious lives.

In the absence of a major disaster action plan, these agencies said the state government was stupefied in dealing with the numbing emergency. It was totally unprepared and the lack of heavy and sophisticated equipment to deal with a natural calamity of this magnitude was bewildering.

To make matters worse, non-governmental agencies were burrowing their own furrow in reaching out to the affected in the far-flung areas, leading to chaos and utter confusion. Distribution of relief material flooded from all over the country created major logistic problems, with communication links badly disrupted.

The authorities in the state government acknowledge that the real problem in relief and rehabilitation is going to arise now as water, food, medicines and other wherewithal will have to be maintained for at least six months so that the affected people are slowly able to piece their shattered lives together.

“Food for the survivors and fodder for the cattle in Kutch district which has faced drought for three consecutive years is a matter of serious concern,” officials said. They emphasised that various linkages, including the railway network, have to be geared up expeditiously for sustaining this effort for a considerable length of time.

Bulldozing of flattened structures is gaining momentum here and Kutch district even as the Army and paramilitary forces continued their relentless job of removing the huge mounds of debris.