MARGAO
As dog bites came back to haunt tourists and visitors at the Cavelossim beach, Cavelossim village Sarpanch Dixon Vaz has sent an SOS to Director, Mission Rabies seeking help and assistance to keep the stray dogs on the beach at bay.
With two separate incidents of dog bites reported on the beach on New Year Day, the sarpanch has on Thursday dashed off a letter to Dr Murugan Appupillai, Director of Education Mission Rabies asking for assistance in stopping dog attacks on the Cavelossim beach area.
“Tourists as well as the locals are being attacked by a couple of dogs. This needs an urgent attention and experts to deal with the situation. Yesterday, we had two separate incidents by the same dogs and the tourists were bitten very badly, spoiling their holidays,” he said, while seeking help to resolve the important issue.
Dixon said the recent dog attacks on beaches have increased past few months. “At least more than eight tourists have been bitten by the strays. This is not good for our tourism as there is a decline in tourism and this can create more fear among tourists,” Dixon added.
Saying he has requested the Director for Mission Rabies to help the panchayat in controlling the strays, the sarpanch has hoped that the animal welfare NGO will deploy a team to Cavelossim immediately to assist the panchayat body.
“Our village panchayat has a dog shelter and we have hired a person to look after strays and wounded dogs as well as abandoned puppies. We feed them twice a day. We need to keep our tourists safe so that they will return again because we mostly depend on tourism,” he added.
