A damning report by a federal prosecutor has labelled many of the venues used during the Rio 2016 Olympics as “white elephants” with no thought having been given to their use post-Games.
Federal prosecutor Leandro Mitidieri issued the report on Monday and criticised Games organisers for their lack of foresight when building venues for last summer’s Games.
Some of the venues remain closed following the conclusion of the Games and Mitidieri says plans must be put in place to ensure facilities are utilised again in the future.
“There was no planning,” Mitidieri said, according to the Associated Press news agency. “There was no planning when they put out the bid to host the Games. No planning.
“They are white elephants today. What we are trying to look at here is to how to turn this into something usable.”
According to the AP, Rio’s Olympic Park is currently empty, with clutter from the Games having not yet been removed. There are plans to reopen a cluster of venues in Deodoro as a public park but it remains closed.
Rio’s undersecretary for sports, Patricia Amorim, said there are also plans in place for the handball arena used during the Games to be demolished and replaced by schools.
“It will be dismantled,” Amorim said, according to the AP. “We are just waiting to know whether we will actually have resources to build these schools on other sites, or whether we will dismantle it and wait for the resources to come. Our schools need to be reformed and that’s our priority, not new schools.”
In other news, an aide of Brazilian President Michal Temer, Tadeu Filippelli, was yesterday (Tuesday) arrested along with two ex-governors as part of an investigation into renovation work at Brasilia’s Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha, according to the Reuters news agency.
The stadium hosted games during Brazil’s staging of football’s Fifa World Cup in 2014. The three individuals are said to have been arrested amid allegations from an auditing court that the renovation project included significant overbilling.
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