Anyone who met too many people, didn't wear a mask or was out late at night got a fine in lockdown.
Many proceedings are still ongoing.
For the district offices in Bavaria, the corona violations mean high income - and a lot of work.
Land is only now in sight.
For now.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- Maximilian Zahler can just breathe deeply again. Since the beginning of the pandemic, he and his colleagues have processed 2,523 violations of the corona protective measures issued by the state. At the moment, the stacks of notices in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen trade office are getting smaller again. Fewer bans mean fewer violations. And so also less work for the district office. “We still need a few more weeks to process everything,” says the department head.
Meeting unauthorized friends, not wearing a mask, disregarding the quarantine period or curfew: the range of violations of the corona rules was and is large - and yet everyone in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ends up on payer's desk.
“A standard notification takes an hour to be checked and sent,” says the 50-year-old.
"And that's only because the police are already relieving us of a lot of work through the hearings."
Corona in Bavaria: fines for restaurateurs without a hygiene concept
To date, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district office has fined a total of 470,000 euros since the pandemic began. Now the flood of violations is ebbing. But there is no end in sight. “There are people who cannot be taught,” says Zahler. Some restaurants have now completely forgotten about hygiene and spacing concepts. "Not keeping the contacts is dangerous because it makes it impossible to trace the chain of infection in an emergency."
This is one of the reasons why the catering industry is being increasingly monitored. In the event of violations, payer and his colleagues then have to weigh up whether they were caused by negligence or intent. In some cases in the district, the highest fines to date were imposed, at 5000 euros. "Unfortunately, we currently have several deliberate violations of hygiene concepts that have led to temporary closures," explains Zahler. Private individuals, on the other hand, most frequently violated the contact restrictions during the lockdown months. A fact that can also be observed in other counties.
So far, 2,224 fine proceedings have been initiated in the Weilheim-Schongau district.
Meanwhile, according to the spokeswoman for the district office, all arrears have been processed.
Similar to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the violations were punished with a maximum of 5,000 euros.
"As soon as the rules became stricter, there were more fines to process again," said the spokeswoman.
This resulted in a total of around 410,000 euros.
Corona violations in Erding doubled compared to the previous year
In the Dachau district it is as much as 529,000 euros. The administrative offenses have now been dealt with here, too, but the officials are still busy with the rat tail: Above all, appeals and applications for payment in installments still need to be processed. Tasks that still have to be mastered in the Bad Tölz Wolfratshausen district. Of 2500 violations, 700 are still unprocessed. Here too, the exit and contact restrictions and the mask requirement were violated most frequently. With a fine of 10,000 euros, a sports facility operator is the exception because he opened his business in lockdown despite the ban. Like Dachau and Bad Tölz, the Erding District Office also recorded considerably more violations this year than last year: 880 proceedings were initiated in 2020. This year there are almost twice as many at 1643.
Will it go on like this? “I definitely don't want to look into the crystal ball,” says Maximilian Zahler from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Nevertheless, he dares to predict the end of the year. “There will probably be more in Garmisch too. The reason: the many border violations in the spring, when the rules for transit were so strict. ”His trade office registered around 500 violations there alone. And now the obligation to test at the borders also applies. So more work could build up again after the holidays.