Problems In Tokyo

The 2020 Olympics are not far away, basically there are roughly 8 months till the opening ceremony and you can read something about it in the news every day. This being the second Olympics for Tokyo, I thought they have already the necessary experience to organize the game. Reality says they don't.

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Today I came across an article about some serious problems. Asbestos has been found at one of the venues, in fireproof material sprayed on part of the structure supporting the Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Center's roof. It looks like they knew about it for some time and at first decided not to do anything about it. The reason is they said it's insignificant but then they have changed their minds and decided to take action.

For those of you who don't know what asbestos does, it's a very dangerous material used in construction, that can cause mesothelioma, which is lung cancer. Many construction workers got sick because of working with asbestos, back then they had no idea what they were dealing with.

I'm glad the officials have decided to clean the place as asbestos must be eliminated. Health is important and they have to make sure nothing puts people's health at risk.

This however is only one problem. Looks like people responsible for budgets were too optimistic. I had a post a few month ago when news broke about the budget. At that point it looked like the initial $7.3 billion became $12.6 billion. That was bad enough as it looked like the budget almost doubled and we are not talking about millions but about billions. Now I'm reading that the estimated $12.6 billion is becoming more like $26 billion! This is very bad as it's 3.5 times more than the initial budget. Looks like no one is going to be held responsible for the extra expenditure.

I truly hope they can get enough income from tickets, advertisements, sponsors etc. to cover a good part of the costs and those stadiums and buildings can be used after the Olympics. Otherwise it's a huge waste or resources and we've seen in other countries what's happened with those arenas, stadiums that were only built for the event. I'm not saying they must make a profit of the event as you never know what's going to happen, however the event should not be a burden on the Japanese people's shoulder for years after the event. That extra money is taken away from them and could have been used for other things, more important things.

I'm going to follow the news to see the final numbers and truly hope it's not going to go higher. It's shouldn't as it's high enough already.