Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Over the past five years, stray cattle and domestic animals have been identified as the cause of 73 motor vehicle accidents in Goa, resulting in the deaths of thirteen persons.
According to police data, 73 incidents happened in Goa between the month of May and the year 2019. The accidents were caused by animals that wandered onto the roads.
Thirteen human lives and nineteen animal lives were lost in these seventy-three accidents.
Nilkanth Halarnkar, the minister of animal husbandry, stated that the highest number of traffic fatalities caused by stray animals on the highways was recorded in 2021. Halarnkar informed the Goa legislative assembly that year that five people and six animals had died.
Cattle that strayed onto the roads resulted in accidents that claimed the lives of four people and six animals in 2020, whereas three people and two animals were killed in 17 accidents just one year earlier in 2019.
The police had provided the Animal Husbandry Department with information regarding the whereabouts of stray cattle around the State. There were 91 locations in South Goa and 55 locations in North Goa where the Traffic Police Department had received reports of stray cattle wandering the highways.
This information indicates that there can be a maximum of 38 cattle parked on the road in the Ponda traffic area. There are twenty in Anjuna, thirteen in Canacona, nine in Panaji, six in Mapusa and Porvorim, five in Pernem, and twenty in Vasco.
The State had the most number of 22 incidents resulting from stray animals in 2022 out of all the months from 2019 to June 2024. In this, one person lost their life. As per the response, four animals have passed away.
