"I am gradually losing the will to wait": Humeira Küçük works as a carer in Germany and has been waiting for a year and a half for her qualifications to be recognised. The woman is losing patience, and specialists like her are sorely needed.
Humeira Küçük has been working for a year at a Caritas social care centre in Rheinfelden, near the Swiss border. The woman has Turkish citizenship, grew up in Switzerland, where she also received her qualifications, ARD reports. But although she would earn much more as a carer in Switzerland, she prefers to work in Germany because she can better combine her working hours with raising children. Since she mainly visits patients' homes who are receiving outpatient care, she can flexibly distribute her commitments.
"It's unfair"
Küçük will probably also benefit from the planned tax breaks - this is her first year of work in Germany, during which she will receive a 30 percent reduction. In the second year, the percentages will be 20, in the third - 10, explains ARD. However, Küçük is not enthusiastic about the plans. "If I am going to get tax breaks, my German colleagues should get them too. Otherwise it is unfair, given that others are working so hard," the woman told the German public-law media.
The head of the social welfare office, Kerstin Pozniak, fears dissatisfaction in her team if foreign specialists receive tax breaks and Germans do not, even though they do the same job. "I think we should rather look in another direction - where the problems are", she believes.
Bureaucracy and a lot of waiting
The real problem is bureaucracy, including for Humeira Küçük. She has been waiting for Germany to recognize her Swiss qualification for a year and a half. But the services are overloaded and constantly mislead her. "Every time I call the relevant officials, they tell me that they are working on the issue. "I have no idea how long this will last," Küçük told ARD.
The result: she is currently working as an unskilled worker, which means 300 euros less per month. Depending on how long the authorities wait for their opinion, the difference could be up to 800 euros, because at Caritas, employees receive more and more money over time. However, this does not apply to unskilled personnel.
Every day - new obstacles
Rolf Steinegger, who is on the board of Caritas, is faced with bureaucratic obstacles almost every day: a Cameroonian employee who has been employed for a long time has never received a visa and cannot come to Germany. Another US employee, who had been driving in Germany without any problems for six months with her American driver's license, now suddenly has to pay a significant amount to get a German one. In other cases, the services issued conflicting instructions because one did not know what the other was doing.
"Let's imagine someone from abroad comes and says: I want to work in Germany", Steinegger tells ARD. They lure him with tax breaks, but the problems only appear later. "He will cope faster in Canada or anywhere else in the world", Steinegger is convinced. Moreover, with the current shortage of personnel to care for the sick and elderly, there is an urgent need for foreign specialists. At the outpatient social care service in Rheinferden, their share is already between 30 and 40 percent.
The opposition to the government project is serious
Many Germans also believe that tax breaks are not the most appropriate means: surveys show that more than half of those surveyed reject the government's plans. Criticism is coming from both the opposition and from within the ruling coalition itself. Experts such as economist Monika Schnitzer consider the approach to be fundamentally correct, but emphasize that in Germany, bureaucratic obstacles in particular need to be removed.
Humeira Küçük would probably receive more at the end of the month even without the breaks if her Swiss professional qualifications were finally recognized. "I'm gradually losing the will to wait", the woman tells ARD. She will probably return to Switzerland at some point. And her German employers and patients will lose another much-needed staff member.