Page 63 - 072917

Groton Daily Independent
Saturday, July 29, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 029 ~ 63 of 67
posed deadlines and drove up the price. A state auditor’s report said the 9.7 billion real ($3 billion) subway was overbilled by 25 percent.
Igor Silverio lives nearby the port in a favela — or shanytown — and came the other day to kick around a soccer ball with his two young boys. The area in his youth was known for decay and drunkenness.
“For sure it’s better,” he said. But, he added, he “expected more from the Olympics.”
“From my point of view, the Olympics only bene ted the foreigners. Local people themselves didn’t get much. The security situation isn’t good, the hospitals. I think these are investments that didn’t bene t many local people.”
He said he skipped the Olympics because they were “too expensive” and located far away in the suburbs.
Standing outside the new subway line, 57-year-old domestic worker Isa Trajano Fernandes said public transportation had improved but was still de cient.
“When the Olympics were going on it was better, but then they let it slide,” she said. She complained about crowding on the new express buses and the lack of security. “People have no dignity using public transportation in Rio de Janeiro,” she said.
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THE BAD
The Olympics left a half-dozen vacant sports arenas in the Olympic Park and 3,600 empty apartments in the boarded-up Olympic Village. Deodoro, a major complex of venues in the impoverished north, is shuttered behind iron gates.
Standing across the street, Jose Mauricio Pehna de Souza was asked if Rio bene ted from the Olympics. “I don’t think so, not us in Brazil,” he said.
A $20 million golf course is struggling to nd players and nancing.
A few dozen were on the course on a recent, sunny Saturday. The clubhouse is mostly unfurnished, and
it costs non-Brazilians 560 reals ($180) for 18 holes and a cart.
Organizers and the International Olympic Committee say Rio needs time to develop these venues, and
faults Brazil’s deep recession for most of the problems.
A prosecutor several months ago disputed this, saying the Olympic Park “lacked planning how to use
white elephant” sports venues. Many were built as part of real estate deals that have yet to pan out. Juliana Solaira, a 30-year-old pharmacist who lives across from the park, called the space “an excellent
legacy” but said “few people use it.”
“Here we see all this money spent,” she said. “Unfortunately, we see most of the arenas are closed. So
I think it could have been used in a better way.”
The park offers few amenities: no restaurants, no shade and nothing much to do except gawk at de-
serted arenas. City hall of cials and the federal government say they’re planning an event for Aug. 5 to “ ll all the arenas” for the day.
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THE UGLY
Rio organizers promised to clean up polluted Guanabara Bay in their winning bid in 2009. During the
Olympics, of cials used stop-gap measures to keep oating sofas, logs and dead animals from crashing into boats during the sailing events.
Since the Olympics, the bankrupt state of Rio de Janeiro has ceased major efforts to clean the bay, its unwelcome stench often drifting along the highway from the international airport.
“I think it’s gotten worse,” Brazil’s gold-medal sailor Kahena Kunze said in a recent interview. “There was always oating trash, but I see more and more. It’s no use hiding the trash because it comes back. I gured it would get worse because I haven’t seen anything concrete being done.”
Avenida Brasil, the main north-south artery through the city, is a snarl of un nished roads and express bus lanes, viaducts to nowhere and detours through miles (kilometers) of traf c cones.
Some of the politicians behind the Olympics have been accused of graft, and organizers still owe credi- tors about $30 million to 40 million.