SRIKAKULAM: Tribal museum, proposed to be ready by mid-2019, has been delayed allegedly due to funds crunch. In an attempt to develop Seetampeta tribal area as a tourist destination, the then Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) Project Officer L Shiva Sankar took the initiative to develop tourist places in the tribal areas.
Though the NTR Adventure Park and Mettaguda waterfalls were constructed successfully, the tribal museum and a hill resort at Jagatimetta hang fire. Almost 70 per cent of the museum has been completed, while the hill resort project did not progress beyond the foundation stage. The construction of the tribal museum was started in 2018 at an estimated cost of Rs 1 crore with a view to complete it by the middle of this year.
The project monitoring resource centre (PMRC) building of the ITDA was converted into a tribal museum. As much as 50 lakh was granted to complete the museum in the later phase. With the allocated funds, about 70 per cent of the construction was completed.
Similarly, a hilltop resort was proposed as part of the tourism development at Jagatimetta with an estimated Rs 27 crore in 2018. In the initial phase, about Rs 7 crore was released by the government. District tourism officer N Narayana Rao said almost 70 per cent of the museum works have been completed till now. He said that the museum would be ready by January-end as it had hit some technical issues with the contractor.