Brazil will recruit an extra 3,000 national guard agents for Olympic duty because of a security company’s last-minute admission that it failed to hire enough workers to man gates and operate X-ray machines during the games, the country’s justice minister said on Friday.
It was the latest setback for Olympic organizers, who were also forced to contract an emergency maintenance squad of 600 workers to deal with plumbing and electricity problems at the Athletes’ Village this week.
The security work will be done by the National Force – Brazil’s equivalent of the U.S. National Guard. It is made up of active-duty police officers from states across Brazil and is a crucial component of the 88,000 security personnel working during the games, which open on Aug. 5. The extra 3,000 workers will include police officers who retired during the last five years, the minister said.
Artel Recursos Humanos, a small company with no previous experience with security contracts, was just awarded the $5 million contract earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company, which came second in the bidding, according to Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes, registered 3,400 workers to work at the gates and operate X-ray machines – but it was only able to hire about 500. Another company bid nearly $6.5 million to replace Artel but was vetoed, the minister said.
“The National Force will take on a new mission from now, a mission I am certain they will do with absolute tranquility – the control of the gates and the control of the X-rays and also the control of access,” de Moraes said.
“The company that won the bid, the company that was contracted, unfortunately did not fulfill its contractual obligations,” de Moraes said, speaking at a ceremony at Rio’s military airbase to welcome 1,000 extra members of the force. “It will be made responsible and fined for its irresponsibility.”
