Just eight months before the 2016 Olympics are to be held in Rio de Janeiro, administrators of Rio de Janeiro's famed Maracanã stadium have fired 75% of the arena's staff.

According to the consortium formed by Odebrecht SA and entertainment group AEG,  40 people were laid off on late Monday. In a report with The Guardian, Maracanã administrators said that the reason behing the layoffs are to cut costs while the arena is under to control of the Olympics. The arena tours and maintenance will be done by contractors.

The stadium will be used for nine months by Games organizers, who are reportedly bringing in their own workers. Brazil's flagship stadium is equipped with almost 79,000 seats. The Maracana is scheduled to host Olympic soccer matches, as well as its opening and closing ceremonies.

Ownership of the flagship stadium was passed in 2013 to a private consortium. This has now come under fire during the country's massive corruption scandal at the country's state-run oil company, Petrobras.

The stadium consortium was reported to have lost 125m reais ($31.2m) during the first two years of operations.The stadium may have taken an even bigger beating in the past year. It is in discussions with the state government to renegotiate their contract. The administrators have confirmed this report, saying that renegotiations are ongoing.

There has been much controversy behind the upcoming 2016 Olympics. There have been numerous incidents of human rights violations including thousands of children, who become the victims of violence, and mass evictions stemming from building projects for the 2016 games, Esquire reported.

The report also says that 4,120 families have lost their homes, while another 2,486 are being evicted in order to give way for infrastructure projects associated with the upcoming Olympics. Some residents have been shot and killed, while many have been wounded. Others are psychologically scarred by the massive gunfights and tension. 

However, the Rio city government denies the allegations. It says that most of the displacements of the residents are completely unrelated to the Olympics.

The country is suffering from a major recession, which has forced organizers to make drastic cuts to Olympic preparations. Organizers are trying to slash about $500m in expenditures to meet the tight operating budget at $1.9bn. 

On top of that, the country finds itself to be in political turmoil as President Dilma Rousseff finds herself to be at the mercy of impeachment proceedings. She is being accused of breaking fiscal responsibility laws by using money from state-run banks to fill some budget gaps in order to pay for government social spending.