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State of Rio short of budget to pay police for Olympic overtime

Xinhua, October 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

The state government of Rio de Janeiro does not have money to pay police for the overtime they worked during the Olympic Games in August, official sources said on Wednesday.

The State of Rio de Janeiro's secretariat of finance issued a statement saying that "a date was being studied" to pay the debt owed to security forces for extra hours worked during the Games.

The state of Rio, the country's most popular tourism destination, is undergoing a severe economic crisis which forced the federal government to recently lend it 3 billion reais (960 million U.S. dollars) to pay the salaries of public officials.

In recent weeks, Rio state police have threatened to go on strike for not having been paid, a risk at a time when violence in the state capital is soaring.

The state government has said that 3,053 military police and 3,318 civil police were deployed to reinforce daily patrols in the Olympic host city, as part of a massive security apparatus.

The city and the state have been battered by low oil prices, which are a major source revenue, leading interim Governor Francisco Dornelles to decree a state of economic emergency earlier this year. Endit