Panaji: Two families of victims of hit-and-run incidents in Goa received compensation cheques from North Goa collector Ankit Yadav on Thursday under the Compensation to Victims of Hit and Run Motor Accidents Scheme, 2022. The cheques included Rs 2 lakh for a death and Rs 50,000 for grievous injury.“Cases in which the hit-and-run vehicle is not identified, the claim settlement officer is tasked with submitting a proposal to the deputy collector, along with medical report, police report, FIR copy which was processed to the insurance agency who then approve the claim. As a result, family members of the victims were disbursed the amount. From our side, we will try to expedite all the pending claims and we will also have district-level meetings periodically, or every month,” Yadav said.Shivveer Pal suffered grievous injuries in a motor accident near Kala Academy, Campal, here, and received Rs 50,000. Rs 2 lakh was released to the legal heirs of Vinayak Dhargalkar, who died in an accident on the service road near the WRD office at Colvale.Present at the disbursement, road-safety activist Roland Martins said that in some cases, vehicles are traced weeks after an accident, potentially taking the case outside the hit-and-run category.Activists are therefore seeking an enhancement of the compensation available under the same compensation scheme so that victims and their families are not left without financial support when a case no longer qualifies as hit-and-run.“We don’t want to send these people back saying that you will get nothing,” he said. “The immediate focus is to ensure that victims and their families are not left without support because of technical differences between a hit-and-run case and an accident in which the vehicle is eventually traced.”
