Hartz IV: job placement, subsidies, contradictions - that's going wrong in the job centers

Created: 07/25/2022, 12:54 p.m

By: Patricia Huber

The job centers in Germany are increasingly being criticized.

An internal report now shows the problem with helping Hartz IV recipients.

Nuremberg – Not everything always goes according to plan in the job centers in Germany.

This is regularly shown by reports from people who, despite clear regulations, had to argue with the employees there.

For example, a loan for a refrigerator was denied to a Hartz IV recipient, although the law in this case is very clear.

But missing documents and the poor accessibility of the job center also cause trouble again and again.

Now even an internal audit has shown what is going wrong at the Federal Employment Agency.

Hartz IV: Job placement often "not effective"

In the internal report “Vertical Revisions in 2020”, the auditors criticized, among other things, the poor placement of long-term unemployed and procedural problems with objections to Hartz IV decisions, the

newspaper reported on Monday.

For example, the job center's placement service "was not effective in more than half of the cases".

In 56 percent of the cases examined, job centers had not succeeded in increasing job opportunities.

One problem is often the lack of communication with those affected, reports the

.

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Hartz IV: Many errors in contradictions

The newspaper also quoted from the report that so-called integration services were often used "not in a targeted manner".

The payments were “not based on the individual needs” of the unemployed and were therefore “ineffective and inefficient”.

This funding should actually be used, among other things, for the further training of the recipients.

According to

, the revision also checked 234 contradictions against Hartz IV decisions.

In many cases, those affected had no opportunity to express themselves, although this is required.

Also, only 29 percent of the contradictions were decided on time, i.e. within three months.

In addition, there was a problem with the payment requests.

According to the report, 44 percent of rejected appeals did not request reimbursement of benefits.