AFP, Dusseldorf :
Dozens of unemployed people troop into a church in the working-class Garath district of Duesseldorf, western Germany each Friday to load up on donated food, a small gesture towards those left by the wayside in a booming economy.
The number of people out of work has halved in Germany since 2005, but a core of around 900,000 who have been looking for a job for more than a year have proved difficult to place.
What’s more, they have become a campaign issue in elections slated for September 24, as Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised the economy can reach full employment by 2025 — in part by improving support for long-term unemployed people.
And Social-Democratic rival Martin Schulz has vowed to free up public cash for professional training to get the jobless fighting fit.
Reactivating workers is as big a challenge in Duesseldorf as anywhere.
It is the capital of Germany’s most populous North Rhine-Westphalia region, in recent years a byword for rusting industrial infrastructure.
Some 7.5 percent of people in Duesseldorf are out of work, higher than the national average of 5.7 percent. And around 64,000 people, one in eight of the city’s inhabitants, eke out a living on social benefits.
Dozens of unemployed people troop into a church in the working-class Garath district of Duesseldorf, western Germany each Friday to load up on donated food, a small gesture towards those left by the wayside in a booming economy.
The number of people out of work has halved in Germany since 2005, but a core of around 900,000 who have been looking for a job for more than a year have proved difficult to place.
What’s more, they have become a campaign issue in elections slated for September 24, as Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised the economy can reach full employment by 2025 — in part by improving support for long-term unemployed people.
And Social-Democratic rival Martin Schulz has vowed to free up public cash for professional training to get the jobless fighting fit.
Reactivating workers is as big a challenge in Duesseldorf as anywhere.
It is the capital of Germany’s most populous North Rhine-Westphalia region, in recent years a byword for rusting industrial infrastructure.
Some 7.5 percent of people in Duesseldorf are out of work, higher than the national average of 5.7 percent. And around 64,000 people, one in eight of the city’s inhabitants, eke out a living on social benefits.
