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The Biel BE government is concerned about allegations of corruption. The city has reported two employees of the municipal patrol service SIP (Safety, Intervention, Prevention) for bribery, it announced last week. An employee allegedly promised a migrant woman papers in exchange for sexual services, but the woman did not accept this. In a second case, an official allegedly demanded money from a migrant in exchange for the promise that he would quickly and easily obtain a residence permit. The alleged crimes occurred some time ago but were not reported to the city until last November. One of the suspects was released, the other no longer works for the city. It is the presumption of innocence.
The fact that the two cases occurred near the city’s migration authority is making people sit up and take notice. The migration service has been overloaded for years, the media repeatedly reports. Foreigners who want to renew their residence permit often have to wait so long for a decision that their old permit has long since expired. Without valid papers they are in an emergency situation; the two accused officials are believed to have benefited from this.
At least that is what Biel Security Director Natasha Pittet, who has been responsible since April 2023, assumes. “If everything went well, there would be no basis for demanding money or sexual favors for an ID card,” the liberal says. The suspect only had access to the migrant files because the SIP had to assist the migration service due to staff shortages. They would not have been able to issue the promised identity cards themselves.
Is there a lack of will?
The excessive demands on the migration service have been well documented for years, mainly due to political disputes in the city parliament. As early as 2015, there were more than 1,000 unprocessed files for ID card renewals in the office’s hanging pile. The left-wing parties accused SVP man Beat Feurer of lacking the political will to really change the situation at the migration service. Feurer headed Biel’s Security Directorate from 2013 to 2023 before moving to the Finance Directorate.
Feurer did not sit still in the field of migration. He ordered various reorganizations and between 2015 and 2022 the staff budget was doubled from nine to eighteen full-time jobs. But that was not enough – also because the tasks became more complex. The pending mountain of applications has never consisted of less than 800 applications and has recently grown menacingly again: at the end of 2023, 1,400 applications for ID card renewal were being processed.
The working population is fleeing
This has also left its mark on the employees. The number of cases of the disease has increased in recent years. In 2023, a third of the workforce left the migration authority – a real exodus that the Security Directorate attributes “mainly to the excessively high workload”. Last summer the telephone service even had to be stopped for a short time due to a lack of staff.
What happens in the Biel migration office?
Documents available to Blick based on the publicity principle show how precarious the conditions at the residents’ office were as early as 2015. For example, an extensive report from consultancy Deloitte in 2016 showed that the migration service had too few staff to carry out its tasks. The processes are too complicated and the digitalization is insufficient. By 2020, the backlogs must be eliminated through a reorganization, waiting times must be normalized and the digital transformation must be completed.
The need for reform was urgent: a report from the Security Directorate on the Deloitte study shows that the city chancellery concluded that “resident services are no longer functioning properly”. In such a case, the canton as supervisor would have to intervene if the city cannot remedy the situation within a reasonable period of time.
Although the problems with naturalization applications were resolved, the reorganization at the migration agency did not lead to significant improvements. In fact, in recent years the city chancellery has repeatedly questioned whether the migration service functions legally, as it confirmed upon request. However, as a supervisory authority, the canton never intervened. That could now change: in December, the Bern government warned for the first time that it would intervene if the situation did not improve quickly.
But Deloitte’s second report from the end of 2023 shows that the biggest problem at the migration agency is still the lack of staff and the excessive workload. Digitization still doesn’t work. Although electronic data processing was introduced, this has not significantly simplified processes, according to the Directorate of Safety. With current resources, the situation can at best be stabilized, but not improved.
Suggestions for improvement are ignored
The fact that the situation in the Biel Migration Office today is worse than eight years ago, despite various internal and external analyzes and adjustments, is causing dissatisfaction in city politics. When asked, SP MP Anna Tanner criticized the fact that the security directorate had ignored suggestions for improvement and had not yet submitted the required reports on the grievances. According to Tanner, the alleged cases of corruption could have been prevented if they had been looked into earlier.
Should it have been recognized earlier that the reorganization failed in 2015? Neither Feurer nor mayor Erich Fehr (SP) answer questions about this. The city council has decided that only Natasha Pittet will provide information. She had several studies carried out and came to the conclusion: urgent action is needed. That is why it has requested a major reorganization. The government has, among other things, released 200,000 francs for support from an external agency.
Pittet says she doesn’t just want another report on paper, but rather a culture change. She is under pressure after allegations of corruption and the near collapse of the migration agency came to light last summer. But Pittet certainly has room to maneuver: a number of long-standing chief officials in the migration department are set to retire soon. A good opportunity to start over.
Source:Blick
I am Liam Livingstone and I work in a news website. My main job is to write articles for the 24 Instant News. My specialty is covering politics and current affairs, which I’m passionate about. I have worked in this field for more than 5 years now and it’s been an amazing journey. With each passing day, my knowledge increases as well as my experience of the world we live in today.
