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Most citizens assume that they will receive legally binding and helpful information from their authorities.
However, anyone who is dependent on state benefits cannot rely on this under any circumstances.
This is also shown by the high error rate in citizen benefit notifications. Instead of helping, a job center employee advised a benefit recipient that he should take out a loan until a decision was made about his benefits.
The result: The loan was counted as income for the person concerned. He also got heavily into debt.
Jobs are always temporary
The trained plumber Gerd Müller was physically disabled as a result of two accidents. First, he was seriously injured in an attack in 2001. A serious bicycle accident followed in 2006.
Permanent pain and impairments in the shoulder are the long-term consequences. Still, he wanted to work. That’s why he kept taking temporary jobs. However, since his income was not enough, he received additional benefits amounting to 191 euros from the job center.
Job center employee recommends credit
In March, Gerd Müller had to undergo another operation. Shortly before, as so often in the past, he had been dismissed from a fixed-term employment contract.
Because of the low sick pay he is entitled to, he contacts the job center and inquires about higher benefits.
The clerk in charge told him that it would take some time to process an application for full benefits. She recommended that he take out a loan to bridge this time. He did this too.
Documents disappeared from the job center
Mr Müller had been repeatedly disappointed by the job center in the past. He felt harassed by constant summonses. He was even supposed to show up at the job center beforehand on the day of his operation. He therefore decided to forego the operation and apply for housing benefit instead.
On March 31st, Mr. Müller handed in his deregistration at the reception of the job center and applied for housing benefit. After a few weeks, the housing benefit office requested the corresponding deregistration from the job center.
When Mr. Müller requested the relevant form from the job center, it could not be found in his file. Mr. Müller then requested access to the files and, weeks later, found a corresponding note that he had deregistered. The deregistration has disappeared to this day and Mr. Schulz has not received any housing benefit.
Job center tricks citizens’ benefit recipients
So in August he reported back to the job center and has been receiving citizen’s benefit ever since. However, the job center does not want to reimburse him for the difference of around 660 euros.
In addition, you want to fully credit the loan you took out as income. The loan that the job center had advised him to take. Instead of meaning well, he was completely ripped off.
Mr. Müller now has debts of 2,600 euros and several lawsuits pending before the social court that have not yet been decided.
When asked at the responsible job center how it could be that documents disappear, a press spokeswoman replied that “a written confirmation of receipt can be requested upon request. Employees are no longer obliged to hand them over automatically”.
Sebastian Bertram is a trained social worker and has managed a therapeutic facility for over 10 years. He is the founder and main person responsible for Gegen-Hartz.de. His main topics are social law, corporate law and politics. Sebastian is active in unemployment counseling.
2023-12-01 12:41:44
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