Andrea Kapser normally deals with the structural change in work in the city administration in the city’s personnel and organization department. But she recently swapped her desk for a few days with the arrival center for Ukrainian refugees in Riem. There she advised those who arrived: Do they want to stay or move to another accommodation? Where do you get clothes? Which bus is the right one? The assignment was an enrichment for her, says Kapser. To be able to help directly, to find out about the fate of the refugees, to get to know employees from other departments. The 29-year-old is one of many hundreds of employees in the city who, in the course of the current crises, take on completely different tasks for a while, usually much longer than Kapser with her two-day assignment.
According to a current estimate, the city needs more than 1,100 full-time employees to deal with the effects of the war in Ukraine, especially in the social department and in the district administration department (KVR) – the tasks range from looking after the refugees after their arrival to processing applications. The KVR, for example, expects up to 24,000 people to be granted a residence permit by the immigration authorities; they need this in order to be able to work. The departments concerned can provide 700 of the 1,100 extra staff required through internal restructuring. So there remains a need for 400 employees who are temporarily withdrawn from other departments.
In view of these enormous challenges, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) recently addressed a somewhat impatient appeal to the city councilors in the personnel and administration committee. There is a ritual in city council meetings that is repeated with great regularity: thanking the administration for the work on the draft resolutions, for the implementation of the political decisions.
The mayor now warned the city councilors to show their gratitude in other ways, namely to be “a little more patient” when it comes to processing applications and inquiries. In general, everyone could take a step back, Reiter found – in order to relieve the city administration: not every initiative from the city council indicates “that it is about gaining knowledge”. At the general meeting on Wednesday, the mayor wants to propose to the committee that the deadline for processing applications be extended from six to nine months and for city council inquiries from six to twelve weeks. The regulation should apply retrospectively from January until the end of this year.
“Peiman” is the name of the instrument with which the city coordinates the special operations, the abbreviation stands for “Personnel Deployment Management”. It has been and is being used since the Corona pandemic – this crisis is not over either. A total of more than 2800 employees have temporarily left their office over the past two years to track contacts of infected people for the health department, to provide information on the city’s service hotline or to issue fines for the KVR if citizens violate measures to combat the pandemic to have. At peak times, 1,000 employees were on Peiman Corona operations at the same time, and there are currently around 500 more.
Task Force Peiman
Sylvia Dietmaier-Jebara heads the Peiman task force, this personnel shunting station. In 2021 she herself took part in the Corona contact tracing for daycare centers and schools; now she coordinates the special operations at the city. Employees of the tourism office at the main train station now receive the refugees and take care of their first aid. Or an employee who otherwise coordinates the training in their office takes care of the people in the arrival center in Riem. The greatest challenge, according to Dietmaier-Jebara, is the short-term nature, “even with the best calculations” – because the situation can change quickly. You have to rely heavily on the understanding of the employees. It sometimes happens that someone gets a call on Thursday and starts their assignment on Monday.
Compulsory conscription of civil servants is also used as a last resort. This is what happened to a few dozen employees in the week when the new arrival center in Riem was opened on Friday. “There was no other way,” says Dietmaier-Jebara, “in control mode it was no longer possible.” In general, there are already voluntary reports, says Stephan Westermaier, deputy personnel officer. However, many did not dare because they did not want to neglect their actual tasks. In addition, the Peiman assignment sometimes means: shift work, weekend work. On the one hand, the fact that we now have two years of experience with it is a great advantage, says Westermaier; but time has also left its mark on the workforce. “The puff is decreasing, people want to go back to their offices.” The tasks would come “on top”. “But we have to get through this humanitarian crisis. Some things have to take a backseat.”
Mayor Reiter has now asked the departments to inform the specialist committees which tasks can wait in the near future. The thought behind it: It might be easier to shut down entire areas than to second individual employees from many departments. Ultimately, however, the departments can decide for themselves; they just have to meet a certain quota. The department for climate and environmental protection (RKU), for example, has to report 23 people for use, about ten percent of the employees. They came from “all areas, because we try to distribute the burden to some extent,” says a spokeswoman.
So are the city’s climate protection projects being delayed? Will the implementation of the Radentscheid take even longer in the future? Are construction projects awaiting?
When asked how the citizens felt this and which projects could be delayed, the departments only reacted very generally. According to the RKU, one is forced to “defer or even stop” voluntary tasks in order to be able to cope with the time-bound mandatory tasks. But even with such urgently required tasks, “significant delays and reduced intensity of care can be expected”.
According to a spokesman for the planning department, there is no precise analysis of the effects in the individual areas, but “a loss of quality and delays in processing can be expected”. However, special attention is “continued to be on housing construction and the building permit processes, and the aim is to maintain this as best as possible”. The mobility department assures that “important and safety-relevant (mandatory) tasks” are not affected, and that there are delays “in other, mostly conceptual, planning tasks”.