Her Ladyship, Justice Angelina Mensah Homiah
Judges have lamented that dealing with backlog of cases in the various courts in the country is not only frustrating, but has health implications as well.
According to them some magistrates in Accra and Kumasi could have as many as 100 cases on their daily case lists, if not more.
“In order to reverse this trend and to ensure that the Courts remained efficient, the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) was adopted to complement the courts for accelerated access to justice,” they indicated.
Her Ladyship, Justice Angelina Mensah Homiah, Justice of the Court of Appeal and Judge in charge of ADR, disclosed this at a public durbar on ADR held in Takoradi.
She told the gathering that in 2001, she was the only Magistrate serving the entire Northern Region and that she was so much inundated with work. She said ADR appears to be a perfect case back log reduction strategy, which is a great relief for trial Judges and Magistrates. “The good news is that, cases resolved at ADR bring finality to the disputes,” she added.
She noted that ADR drastically reduces the litigation period, the parties come up with their custom-made solution to the dispute and at the end of the day, each party goes home satisfied.
“Unlike the adversarial system, ADR results in a ‘win-win’ situation and in the world of commerce, for example, Time is Money.”
She said Court users have always been encouraged to settle minor cases out of court and report the outcome to the court for further action, such as adopting the agreed terms as consent judgment or striking out the case, as settled.
She indicated that over the last one and half decade, the ADR programme has, to a large extent performed impressively, adding that it has reduced the load on the Courts by 32,745 cases.
Mr. Ebow Donkor, with the Legal Aid Commission in Sekondi said ADR was another way of solving disputes without going to court and has a lot of benefits.
“One of them is, solving dispute faster as compared to the court, and also, bringing peace to both parties as compared to court,” he pointed out.
Mr. Alex Nartey, The Director of ADR, Judicial Service of Ghana said, “We all need peace on this earth but there will definitely be conflict since we are humans. No matter how careful you are, conflict will come your way.”
“But the wisest thing you need to do is that, whenever you are confronted with conflict, adopt the right approach in dealing with it, which is ADR,” he stressed.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi