Wednesday, December 8th, 2021
7000 Afghans in Germany
Thousands of local workers are still waiting to leave
By the end of November there had been around 25,000 admission confirmations for Afghan local staff and their family members. Months after the Taliban came to power, only a little more than a quarter of them are in Germany. For a member of the Left “an absolute indictment”.
Almost four months after the Taliban came to power, thousands of local Afghan workers and their families are still waiting to leave for Germany. With almost 25,000 acceptance confirmations, 7033 people have come to Germany so far, reported the Funke media group, citing a response from the Interior Ministry to a request from the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
According to this, between May 15 and November 26, German authorities agreed to admit 24,556 people from Afghanistan. This affects 4,590 local employees of the Bundeswehr and German ministries as well as 19,966 members. So far, 1,319 local employees with 5,711 relatives have come to Germany. “How many local workers and their family members have left Afghanistan with the help of German authorities with a confirmation of admission cannot be quantified,” said the Interior Ministry, according to the report.
Left-wing MP Gökay Akbulut called the small number of those fetched from Afghanistan “an absolute sign of poverty”. Akbulut told the Funke newspapers that people would “hold out in the greatest fear and insecurity in Afghanistan,” because there are hardly any opportunities to leave the country. She called on the new federal government to accelerate and simplify the recognition process and the organization of evacuations and immigration.
The local workers who have arrived in Germany and their relatives will live in different cities and regions. So far, 375 people had been assigned to Berlin as persecuted local workers, especially those in need of protection or their relatives, as the Berlin Senate had recently announced.