BANGALORE: Minister for Rural Water Supply and Sugar S.A. Ravindranath has said the Government's drought relief programme has suffered in Gulbarga, Raichur and Koppal districts owing to non-formulation of action plans by task forces headed by legislators.

Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, he said legislators of Gulbarga district had not prepared the action plans for the past two years.

The deputy commissioners and chief executive officers of zilla panchayats of three districts had been instructed to expedite the process of preparing the plans. A sum of Rs. 23 crore had been released to tackle drinking water problem in villages affected by drought. Tankers were being used to supply water in 34 villages of Belgaum district, he added.

Mr. Ravindraanth said the deputy commissioners had been instructed to take steps to ensure crushing of sugarcane by factories till the end of May.

Enough sops had been given to the factories (of the 55 in the State, 47 are functional) and there could be no justification for driving small cane growers to distress citing glut in the market. The deputy commissioners had been directed to take steps to transport cane of small farmers to factories before May-end. The large farmers would transport cane to factories on their own, he said.

The sugarcane production in the State was 230 lakh tonnes. Of this, 200 lakh tonnes had been crushed and the remaining would be crushed till the end of next month. Since there were no factories in Indi and Sindagi (Raichur district), a decision had been taken to transport sugarcane to factories in other districts, Mr. Ravindranath said.

The factories refused to crush the cane following crash in the price of jaggery. He said the price of jaggery slumped from Rs. 1,200 last year to Rs. 700 a quintal now, he said.

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