Ageing Germany mulls bill to silence 'noisy' kids
BERLIN: The German government on Friday said it was working on a bill aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children in what is a rapidly ageing society.
Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said. "Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying.
The government is also working on an amendment to building regulations that would make it easier for childcare centres to open in purely residential areas. "Children making noise does not constitute something... that citizens need to be protected from by law, but are an expression of liveliness," Peter Ramsauer, construction minister' said in Berlin.
Germany, where just 14% of the population is less than 14 years old, compared to 45% in Malawi, for example' has seen a spate of complaints against children being children in recent years. Some of these have resulted in kindergartens being refused planning permission or childcare centres having to build noise-protection walls so as not to disturb locals.
Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said. "Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying.
The government is also working on an amendment to building regulations that would make it easier for childcare centres to open in purely residential areas. "Children making noise does not constitute something... that citizens need to be protected from by law, but are an expression of liveliness," Peter Ramsauer, construction minister' said in Berlin.
Germany, where just 14% of the population is less than 14 years old, compared to 45% in Malawi, for example' has seen a spate of complaints against children being children in recent years. Some of these have resulted in kindergartens being refused planning permission or childcare centres having to build noise-protection walls so as not to disturb locals.
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