Crocodile festival gets K100,000

THE Sepik River Crocodile Festival Committee has received a K100,000 sponsorship from the Tourism Promotion Authority and The Minister for Tourism and Culture, Emil Tamur.
Minister Tamur sponsored half of the money to assist the festival through accommodation since it needs improvement to house more tourists before festival starts on August 5-7 this year.
He said, “There were large number of tourists in attendance last year but I felt the festival grounds lacked proper facilities for tourists and other visitors to rest or sit in comfort and observe the festival so I made a commitment of K50, 000 on behalf of my Ministry to assist the show committee build proper sitting facilities in 2019.”
The lack of housing facilities has placed the SRCFC in a situation where they really want more tourists to come but situation on the ground does allow them to take more bookings.
The SRCF’s biggest market came from Europe and Israel last year but some of them had to cancel their trip because of housing. This year the committee wants to change that response by doing something new to house them using the funds given.
Chairman for the SRCF, Aloes Mateos, said he also needs TPA’s support to train and give awareness to the locals of the Sepik River to help house the tourists to allow them to keep coming in.
He added that the festival will showcase many unique things of the Sepik River side of life like the displaying of crocodile nesting and slaughtering of crocodiles which they do not want the next lot of tourists to miss that.