German Federal Employment Agency wants to drug-test unemployed

I am a regular reader of Bill Mitchell's blog and incidentally found this (just scroll down to the end of the Japan post):

The absurd indecency of Austerity in Germany

If you go to the Home Page of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (German Federal Employment Agency) and poke around a bit you will arrive at the public tender page.

The current tenders available for bidding (and supply) were released for public information on August 29, 2014 and are listed as – Infrastructure Tenders.

Hmm, what could the German Government be seeking by way of public infrastructure? New school buildings for the migrant workers’ children to give them a chance in life?

Perhaps some new urban development in poor neighbourhoods ravaged by the Hartz reforms (Mini Jobs) and the lack of growth?

Could be some new medical services? Well, we are on the right track with medical services.

The Tender Document – 1213-14-45216 – Drogenschnelltests und Harnanalyse VT – is seeking submissions for the “Lieferung von Materialien für Drogenschnelltest und Harnanalyse”, which for those those who cannot read German is for the supply of materials for rapid drug tests and urine analysis.

The Tender says:

Ziel der Ausschreibung ist der Abschluss eines Liefervertrages für die bundesweite Lieferung von Schnelltests zum Nachweis von Drogen im Urin sowie von Teststreifen zur Harnanalyse. Diese werden für die Durchführung ärztlicher Untersuchungen in den Agenturen für Arbeit benötigt.

Which means the tender aims to elicit supply contract for the nationwide delivery of rapid tests for the detection of drugs in urine and test strips for urine analysis. These are required by employment agencies to conduct medical examinations on income support recipients (unemployed) to determine whether they can receive support or not.

They want to test for the presence of 10 drugs

Parameters: amphetamine, benzodiazepine, cannabinoid (THC), cocaine, methadone, Methamphetamin, MDMA (ecstasy), opioids, tricyclic antidepressants, barbiturates and buprenorphine (BUP).

Imagine the dystopia that is emerging – thousands of unemployed all lined up with para-medics forcing them to undertake medical procedures just in case, in their alienation and despair at being jobless, they have imbibed on something other than alcohol or nicotine.

The tender closes on September 23, 2014.

I urge all my readers to submit a tender document and let the German Government know what you think of them treating their unemployed citizens in this way.

The address for sealed tenders is:

Bundesagentur für Arbeit
Service-Haus; Zentraleinkauf – Vergabestelle
Regensburger Straße 104
90478 Nürnberg
Deutschland.

Make sure you satisfy all the good character requirements that the tender documents outline so that you avoid breaking German Federal Law. The requirements are rather extensive. f only the recipients of the tenders had similar characteristics!

Anyway, go on, flood their administrative processes with submissions.

As a historical note, in past times, the German government ran tenders for Zyklon B.

(c) Copyright 2014 Bill Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.