Chief Justice advocates use of ADR in oil disputes

7/10/2010

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
THE Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, has advocated the use of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as the most appropriate mechanism for the peaceful resolution of oil related disputes.
She stressed the need for the country to position itself to manage the disputes that were bound to arise from the oil industry.
Mrs Wood was opening a two-day training workshop on the ADR Act 2010 (Act 798) organised by the Ghana Association of Certified Mediators and Arbitrators (GHACMA) in Accra yesterday.
The workshop was to educate the mediators and arbitrators on the ADR Act and to strategise how to encourage the public to resort to the ADR mechanism in settling conflicts.
Mrs Wood said it was the collective responsibility of all Ghanaians to consider matters of public interest in relation to oil find, not necessarily out of the euphoria of the expected oil revenue.
Rather, she said, the people should concern themselves with, “the negative consequences that might befall our relatively peaceful nation, if issues are not properly managed”.
Mrs Wood said the importance of ADR in justice delivery was acknowledged worldwide, and that it was no surprise that the Ghanaian judiciary had integrated it into the country’s justice system.
Consequently, she said, the judiciary, under a World Bank funded programme, was to embark on a training programme for traditional rulers aimed at building their capacity and equipping them with ADR practice.
Mrs Wood said with the passage of the ADR Act 798 , ADR had been elevated and should now provide the needed impetus to the country’s collective effort at making ADR attractive to persons in conflict.
The President of GHACMA, Prof. Kofi Quarshigah, said the ADR Act had come to revolutionise the practice of ADR Act 798 in Ghana, and indicated that GHACMA was committed to making the Act known and appreciated by all Ghanaians.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Chairman of the National Labour Commission, Mr J. A. Aryittey, expressed the hope that with effective publicity, employers, workers and the public would be reminded that, there were accessible structures to resolve disputes.
The Secretary of the Ghana Bar Association, Mr Martin Nwosu, said ADR had steadily emerged within the legal framework as a credible alternative to remedy the shortcomings of litigation and to speed up and improve the justice delivery system.
Lieutenant General Arnold Quainoo, a member of the Council of State, who chaired the function, charged the GHACMA to create a demand for the ADR and make people believe that they were better off using the ADR.