By Gunnar Schupelius
Unbelievable but true: A Berliner didn’t get an appointment at the Citizens’ Registration Office and was punished for it. The Citizens’ Registration Office should actually be there for the citizen and not to treat the citizen badly, says Gunnar Schupelius.
It’s still like winning the lottery if you get an appointment at the Citizens’ Registration Office. The situation is improving only very slowly.
It was at its worst during the lockdown months. During this time, BZ reader Heidi Berndt experienced how bad the service can be. Your identity card became invalid on October 22, 2021. Months in advance, she tried to get an appointment at the Bürgeramt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg to apply for a new ID card.
She was really unlucky: there was nothing to be done either online or via the authority number 115. Even in the lockdown winter 2021/22 it was no better. Then she happened to read in the newspaper that you should literally lie in wait around the clock on the online portal of the citizen registration office. At some point, a free appointment will light up in blue and you should grab it.
Said and done. Heidi Berndt lay in wait and her efforts were rewarded. “That worked out,” she writes to us. “I was given an appointment at 1:30 a.m..” On June 2, she finally presented herself and applied for a new ID card.
So far so good. But then she got angry mail from the district office: “You have from Friday, October 22. 2021, until Thursday, June 2nd 2022, knowingly and in breach of duty as German nationals possessed neither a valid identity card nor a provisional identity card or replacement identity card, although they are over 16 years old and are subject to the general obligation to register in Germany.
Warning money: 50 euros. Mrs. Berndt lodged an objection: useless. She wrote to the Senate of the Interior and received a reply from Ute Zoske, Division I A – Constitutional and Administrative Law I A 22. Ms Zoske wrote that the Senate had “recommended” the Citizens Registration Offices to refrain from administrative offense proceedings until “the pandemic situation” had calmed down.
But this recommendation was apparently completely irrelevant to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office. In a letter dated September 19, Ms. Berndt received a serious threat: “If you do not pay the fine, a fine must be issued.”
In this letter, she was once again accused of having “deliberately” not had a valid identity card for seven months. And then there was a really brazen claim: “The citizen registration offices were always available, even in times of a pandemic.”
When Ms. Berndt finally paid, a new letter asked her to renew her driver’s license. But she doesn’t even have a driver’s license.
Like many other Berliners, she finds the behavior of her district office not only unfriendly, but impertinent. The Citizens Registration Office should actually be there for the citizens and not to treat the citizens badly.
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]