City Council elects Etelka Kobuß as Commissioner for Foreigners
Yesterday, the City Council re-elected Etelka Kobuß as the City of Chemnitz's Commissioner for Foreigners for the duration of the current electoral term.
Her work to date has focussed on providing advice and information to people with a migration background, authorities and institutions. She is particularly keen to enable children and young people to attend school and vocational training and to give them an equal opportunity on their educational path. For example, at her suggestion, it was made possible for high school graduates in Saxony to use bilingual dictionaries in their examinations in future.
She organises the annual Intercultural Weeks and initiates projects such as the travelling exhibition "Asylum" on the topic of asylum or the Intercultural Film Weeks, during which films on migration, integration, human rights, racism and right-wing extremism are shown.
In particular, she has set herself the goal of improving the situation of asylum seekers in the next parliamentary term. As a first step, she initiated a conference for practitioners on the topic of asylum, which she will hold for the first time on 8 July 2015 in cooperation with the Social Welfare Office and the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. She also wants to focus her attention on young people who are 15 or older when they arrive in Germany in order to enable them to complete their schooling and thus integrate better. Kobuß sees a great need for the integration of people with a migration background in day-care centres and for the expansion of language courses. She sees her external impact above all in programmes to reduce prejudices against people with a migration background.