Sunday 26 January 2014

krafttakt or pilot-project

While German websites in China are going blank over a controversial unmasking concerning Chinese tax-havens and there is some hand-wringing over the decision whether to dub as worthy a connoisseur a share of cultural heritage, Germany is aggressively recruiting nursing assistants to try in a small way to compensate for the shortage of care-givers have imported from China and the first five of an expected 150 nurses have arrived in Frankfurt.

These trained and hopefully linguistically and cultural ready individuals have been brought over to mainly assuage the shortage of qualified personnel to care for an aging demographic, in old folks' homes. Nursing professionals are not quite the same as exported au pairs who come without credentials except by recommendation and reputation. At the same time, the body representing care-givers is bemoaning the labour-conditions and wage for the existing workforce, which is hardly an incentive in itself to recruit and retain capable individuals. Of course, in such vocations, mere money and comfort are not what motivate people. I wonder what the broader implications are of not just furthering the tradition of guest-workers but of native aspirations and ambitions that have out-grown such levels of service.