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Those responsible in Germany's municipalities are increasingly angry about the information policy of the federal and state governments in the corona crisis.

This is the result of a representative survey of almost 2000 municipalities by the opinion research institute Forsa on behalf of the magazine “Kommunal”, which is exclusively available to WELT AM SONNTAG.

According to this, 36 percent of mayors are dissatisfied with the way corona measures are announced, justified and explained.

In the first lockdown, the value was still 21 percent.

Around a fifth of those questioned wanted clearer instructions, a quarter earlier information.

In particular, there is still a great need for information about childcare.

80 percent of the mayors surveyed stated that residents used it to contact their town halls most often.

In the first lockdown, this was stated by 58 percent.

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Gerd Landsberg, General Manager of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, confirms that municipalities, especially in the school sector, are informed far too quickly about new measures by the federal states.

"If the cities and municipalities, as the school authorities, only find out on a Friday evening which regulations will come into force on Monday or Tuesday, reasonable communication with the schools, but also with parents and students, is hardly possible." dumped to the mayors and school authorities.

The mayoress Ute Seifried (non-party) from Singen in Baden-Württemberg, for example, counted “28 amended ordinances” on her desk in one day according to her own statements.

She calls for a concept to make face-to-face teaching and daycare openings possible again quickly.

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There are also many unanswered questions about the vaccinations that started at the end of December.

60 percent of respondents said that inquiries about this would pose challenges for the communities.

On Saturday, Hamburg's mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) wrote on Twitter that the Federal Chancellery had now announced that the promised vaccine deliveries from Moderna would also be reduced.

You couldn't plan like that.

Tschentscher is a state politician, but as Hamburg's head of government he is responsible for a city.

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How overwhelmed municipalities are is also shown by the fact that the majority of municipal politicians (60 percent) report that there are no employees to monitor the measures.

Contact follow-up is only successful in one in seven communities.

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For example, there are only seven employees in the 3000-inhabitant community Käbschützal near Dresden.

Even the mayor Uwe Klingor (CDU) had to carry out controls there.

“Politicians are knocking out one regulation after the other, but who should implement and control all of this?” He asks.

According to 30 percent of those surveyed, there are serious bottlenecks in staff in hospitals.

Four percent even said their hospitals were already overloaded.

Verbal abuse is also increasing in many places.

More than a quarter of respondents said that their employees had been increasingly insulted since the beginning of the pandemic.

In larger cities, 42 percent reported this.

In the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Dormagen, for example, patrol services are now threesome as a precaution.

Dormagen's mayor Erik Lierenfeld (SPD) was targeted by Corona opponents at the end of last year because he warned in a Facebook video that mask opponents could address students in front of the school.

Lierenfeld had subsequently received hate emails and death threats.

Other mayors also stated in the survey that they had problems with so-called corona deniers.

Every tenth person is faced with major problems here, especially in southern and eastern Germany.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, local political spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, had already called for more support for the municipalities in the past.

The cities were reaching their organizational and financial limits, she told this newspaper.

For example, vaccination centers have been available since mid-December, for example in her home town of Düsseldorf.

But because there is no vaccine there, older people are always at the door for free.

The employees of the health department and fire brigade have to improvise constantly.

"The communication on the part of the Federal Minister of Health Spahn is miserable," is Strack-Zimmermann's devastating judgment.

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This text comes from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: Welt am Sonntag