Tourist numbers are down, the organising committee are having difficulty selling tickets, hoteliers are complaining of empty rooms.
The projected bonanza of 100,000 extra people in the city to celebrate the Commonwealth Games has failed to materialise. Local tourist bodies say only about 10,000 people are in New Delhi because of the Games.
The athletes are virtually bunkered down at the athletes' village and their training venues with many countries having banned them from going outside the security-fenced area. Everyone is on tenterhooks fearing that the 300 tonnes of explosives that went missing from a convoy of 61 trucks last month in India will be used to target the Games.
The fear of something happening is as thick as the chemicals being sprayed on the nearby pools of stagnant water to rid the area of Dengue fever mosquitoes.
Meanwhile the Delhi police have upped their security presence at the athletes' village. The reason? Theft of bathroom fittings and fixtures by the hordes of workers recruited to clean up the accommodation mess in the past week.
To illustrate the tension because of security concerns, two of the reserve English hockey players were stuck outside a security checkpoint in the sun for nearly an hour near the athletes' village as they did not have the required accreditation to get through an entrance dedicated for VIP's.
They casually mentioned their downtown hotel accommodation and I wrote it down to be able to find them later on for a comment. England team manager David Faulkner saw the name of the hotel on my notepad and furiously demanded that the information be crossed out "for security purposes".
He later apologized for being so aggressive, but acknowledged that the security was the biggest concern for everyone here.
Some international delegations have complained to their embassy security experts about suspicious characters lurking in and around the Games village.
On Monday there were alleged leaked intelligence documents from New Delhi authorities which claimed the feared Naxalite terrorist group from east India and a local Mars militant group had been heard in phone intercepts organizing the supply of explosives to unleash at the Commonwealth Games.
Local police have not yet confirmed if the documents, which surfaced on a Pakistani website, are genuine. The document purports to state: "Conversations of the group indicated the Mars has fronted for someone to acquire especially from the police, the group, as per raw intelligence, the supply explosives, gelatin sticks and detonators to the Naxalites and structured pay-offs transactions for attacks on CWG, New Delhi including foreign teams and officials". The document also says the group comprises a large network and supply line.
The Delhi organizing committee has come under fire for hiring 38 middle and top level staff who are related to more than a dozen of its most senior officials. And in another leak exposing the ongoing tensions between the organizing committee and the Commonwealth Games Federation, CGF chief executive Mike Hooper was alleged to have had six staff at his Delhi accommodation and his income tax paid for by the Delhi government.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment