Panaji: Censuring cattle owners for releasing their cattle onto the roads, chief minister Pramod Sawant directly blamed them for the loss of lives in road accidents.Pointing out that the state’s roads are much busier than before, Sawant said that if cattle owners do not take responsibility for their animals, then village panchayats need to round up the stray animals and send them to gaushalas.He was speaking at the National Panchayati Raj Day programme.“Stray cattle and stray dogs are emerging as a major problem for the govt and the panchayats,” said Sawant. “We have seen many people lose their lives, many people suffered leg fractures and who is at fault here? It is not the fault of the animal, it is the fault of the owner of the animal. I am clear on this.”He said that every time a vehicle runs over a stray cow or stray buffalo, owners come running to demand money, particularly from truck drivers. However, nobody takes responsibility for taking the cow or buffalo home or to tie up stray animals.“Those days have gone when we leave our cattle on the road to roam. Today, all our roads are state highways, district highways and national highways. We cannot leave our animals like this. We cannot damage people’s two-wheelers and take people’s lives,” said Sawant.He also pointed out that the expenditure on garbage collection comes to over Rs 500 crore.Sawant announced that govt will soon roll out free and systematic collection of sanitary waste, including sanitary pads and diapers, along with chicken and mutton waste across villages in Goa. Highlighting the growing challenge of disposing of sanitary and diaper waste, he said panchayats will be required to segregate and store such waste separately.“For waste management, we have empanelled contractors. Only those contractors should be hired for waste collection. I say this because we can then track these contractors from our solid waste management office through the GPS system.”“We can track how much waste is picked up, where it is dropped and processed, and how much is baled and sent for incineration,” said Sawant.He also announced that a common website format for all village panchayats will be launched soon.
