International Olympic Committee (IOC) head Jacques Rogge said Monday he was satisfied with the security measures taken by London 2012.
He said safety levels for the 2012 Games have not been compromised by a major security contractor’s failure to find enough staff to secure the Games.
Rogge told a news conference, “of course security is paramount and important for everyone. I think there has been a good show of flexibility with the problem that arouse”.
The British government said it would deploy an additional 3,500 troops for the Games because G4S, the security firm contracted to provide 10,400 guards, could not do so due to problems processing applicants.
Rogge said, “extra input of soldiers is something that gives tranquility in the field of security. They will not be running around with machine guns. They will be ready to intervene. Not visible, not obtrusive, and this will not spoil the fun.
“We got reassurances from the government that security would be absolutely in place. We are in the process of fixing the issue that came up. We absolutely feel secure in terms of transfer of soldiers”.
Rogge added, “the issue here has been handled well. What counts is the flexibility of the organizers and the government and they have been very flexible and very adaptive”.
Meanwhile The Independent reported Sunday that the reason G4S couldn’t get enough staff to handle the Olympics might be related to a problem with an internal computer system.
An insider told the newspaper that the root cause of the problem was G4S’s internal computer system which had failed to calculate staff rostering.
