Politicians in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania hope that a new proposal will prevent private child care centres from being run by neo-Nazis or members of the far-right NPD party, a media report said on Monday.
According to the proposal put forward by state minister for social affairs Manuela Schwesig, those responsible for starting new day care centres or kindergartens must be able to show that their activities are constitutional, daily Ostsee Zeitung reported.
“I’m bothered by the worry that right-wing extremists could become kindergarten leaders,” Schwesig, who is also the deputy leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), told the paper.
Only after it was demonstrated that the facility proprietors did not belong to any far-right organisations would they be allowed to care for children, the paper said. Such scrutiny would be unprecedented in Germany’s northeastern states,
Schwesig's proposal follows the revelation in February that an NPD member tried to take over a child care centre in Bartow. When the tiny town of 550 began searching for a new owner for a local kindergarten, the town council was only barely able to prevent it from being taken on by an NPD member.
The Local Germany
