Many district citizens have got the travel bug.
You need a valid passport to go on vacation abroad.
This is exactly what is difficult in Dachau.
District
- The citizens' office in Dachau is working hard.
Due to the falling corona numbers, many district citizens finally want to go on their long-awaited vacation.
Valid identification documents are required for travel abroad.
However, these often expired during the lockdown.
Because one was not allowed to travel, many have only now realized that their papers are no longer valid, says Head of the Office, Josef Hermann.
3500 unprocessed appointment requests
The rush to the Dachau residents' registration office is therefore large.
The backlog caused by the corona pandemic at the authority is just as large.
3500 appointment requests have had to be processed since last autumn, says Hermann.
However, there is no additional staff available.
There have been extra shifts since March, but these are not enough to handle the large number of pent-up applications.
For the residents of the city of Dachau, this means one thing above all: very long waiting times.
City Councilor Peter Strauch (CSU) objected to this in the most recent meeting of the Environment and Transport Committee.
Six weeks waiting for an appointment
According to Hermann, the time to get an appointment is currently up to six weeks.
Only then can the new ID be applied for.
It can take up to another four weeks for the identity document to reach the owner.
Emergencies such as express orders or temporary passports would already be brought forward.
The employees of the registration office in Dachau have their hands full.
According to Hermann, this year's federal election would also be an “aggravating condition” for the residents' registration office.
No more appointments required from Monday
In order to reduce the extreme waiting times for appointments and finally to process the pent-up applications, the registration office in Dachau will also be open for people without an appointment from next Monday - despite the dark premonition of the main office manager that this could lead to "considerable waiting times" on site.
How this is compatible with the hygiene and distance rules will be found out.
Situation in communities tense, but feasible
It is not quite as stressful as in Dachau in the municipalities of the district, but there, too, the employees in the passport offices feel the high rush of people keen to travel. “Many of them need new passports or new pictures for their children's travel passports,” says Sarah Kothai, deputy head of the residents' registration office in Karlsfeld. Urgent cases, when the trip has already been booked, would, as Kothai assured, "still get under" the employees of the passport office. The appointment system would benefit the employees. "With the appointment requests, we know exactly what the issue is and can calculate how long we will need to process it," explains Kothai. The current waiting time there is currently two weeks.
According to the clerk Andrea Günther, the registration office in the market town of Markt Indersdorf is currently "very booked up".
You can tell that in terms of vacation technology, “nothing has happened for a long time”.
The waiting time for an appointment there can also be up to two weeks.
In contrast to the passport office in Dachau, the Indersdorfer municipality informs its citizens one month in advance about the expiry of the identification documents.
In Dachau, those who love to travel have to be patient for better or worse.
Main Office Manager Hermann advises the citizens not to apply for their papers “at the last minute” or to come by on site.
How well this works will be shown next week.
Further information on passports and ID cards
You must bring your previous identification documents and a current biometric photo with you. Those interested can find further necessary information on the homepage of the City of Dachau. The processing time for the passport is around four weeks. The express passport and the temporary passport are issued immediately. The identity card takes between two to three weeks.