German initiatives are equipping new arrivals with the skills to alleviate the country’s worker shortage
By Hanna Gieffers in Potsdam, Annika Kiehn in Neubrandenburg and Julia Wehmeier in Hamburg,
It’s breakfast time at a care home in Neubrandenburg and Zia Hayafi is busy. He is gently moving an elderly woman from her bed into a wheelchair. He should be hurrying – they are waiting for her in the dining room. But he takes his time, moving close to her ear to ask: “Did you sleep well?” She nods.
“I like old people,” he says. “When I’m that old, I’m going to want someone nice around to look after me.”
Hayafi, 20, has been working here for three months. It is about as different as can be imagined from his former life as an officer in the Afghan police force. There, the big concern was the Taliban (Hayafi, an ethnic Hazara, eventually fled). Here, the concern is whether Germany will let him stay.
Annika KiehN 