By Johannes Malinowski
The Citizens’ Registration Offices in the capital: If it takes a little longer…
Passport, identity card, re-registration: To make an appointment in one of the 59 Berlin citizen offices it takes a lot of patience to get it. In just under a third (29.6 percent) of the requests, the period between the booking and the appointment last March was 15 days or less.
The fewest appointments (110,434) were between January 2021 and March 2022 in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, the most (268,208) in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
The local city councilor for citizen services, Matthias Steuckardt (42, CDU), is now demanding: Citizens’ office appointments only for people from the respective district!
Because: “Some districts make themselves a slim foot,” he says. “The offices there are poorly equipped, while Tempelhof-Schoeneberg or Lichtenberg offer more than they need. That really annoys me.”
According to a survey, 89 percent of citizens would like this decentralization to give up. Steuckardt: “Then everyone in Tempelhof-Schöneberg could easily get an appointment within 14 days.” The consequence for other districts, however: the waiting times would increase to half a year or more.
Matthias Steuckardt is City Councilor for Citizen Services in Tempelhof-Schoeneberg. He is annoyed by the bad image of the citizen offices Photo: Christian Lohse
For Steuckardt this is not an argument. He is annoyed by the bad image of the citizens’ offices. “The human resources are there in all districts,” he says. However, the priorities are set differently everywhere: “Only because of the Berlin-wide responsibility that is not noticeable.”
There’s another way
From time to time there is also good news. For example, by Wolfgang Schulz (82), who went to the town hall in Spandau at the beginning of May because he needed a new identity card, a new driver’s license (his was 60 years old) and a certificate of good conduct.
The upcoming visit to the authority is giving him nightmares. But then something unusual happened.
When he arrived at the office, a friendly employee asked him when he wanted to come. Schulz was allowed to choose between an appointment in the coming week, the following day or the same afternoon. Schulz chose the latter and could hardly believe his luck.
Crazy! Wolfgang Schulz (82) received all the documents he requested within a short time Photo: Parvets
In the afternoon then the even more unbelievable: He waited a full three minutes before he was called to the counter to settle his affairs. That in turn took less than 15 minutes. In fact, a week later he received his certificate of good conduct, ten days later his new driver’s license and three weeks later his new identity card. Schulz felt like a lucky guy.
The BZ says: It works! Why not always like this?
