New Mediators to improve Berbice’s Judicial System

Berbice: Berbice is now fully equipped with twenty-five mediators who were specially trained over the past few months in the skill of mediating. The batch underwent rigorous training through a workshop and training session that ended with the distribution of Certificates of Completion and graduated on Friday at the Little Rock Suites.
 The Advanced Mediation Training program is an initiative of the Governance Enhancement Project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Honorable Carl Singh, Chancellor of the Judiciary.
Present at the ceremony were U.S. Ambassador, D. Brent Hardt and Justice Yonette Cummings- Edwards of the Guyana Court of Appeal. The individuals who received the Certificate of Completion will be added to the Roster of Mediators of the High Court and will be eligible to conduct court related mediation in Berbice.  The training of mediators in New Amsterdam will contribute to the expansion of court-connected mediation to Regions 5 and 6 during 2012.
 
Paul Hinds, a Jamaican- based official from the Dispute Resolution Foundation, conducted the training sessions which began a few months ago. Over sixty persons enlisted, however, only twenty-five moved on to the Advanced Level.
 
In his address Hinds noted that the training “will equip them to do court- connected mediation routinely dealing with attorneys who are part of the mediation itself”. Mediation, he stated, “is a third party process in which people who are in dispute can enlist the aid of the neutrally trained person to help them negotiate their differences”. Mediation, he said is “faster, quicker, cheaper and gives persons the opportunity to ventilate some matters that may not be appropriate for court”.
 
There is a plan to open a mediation centre in Berbice and this will be staffed by the graduates. In 2003, twenty-five mediators from the legal profession were trained through a similar project heralding mediation in Guyana. Between 2003 and 2008, seventy-four more legal and non- legal professionals were trained and approved by the court to conduct mediation.
 
US Ambassador to Guyana, D. Brent Hardt, in his address, praised the mediation process especially since there is a current backlog of cases in the court system, “as it has often been stated: Justice delayed is justice denied’”.
 
Hardt urged the new mediators not to restrict their newly- acquired mediation skills to court-connected cases, “but to use them to encourage greater tolerance and harmony in your households and communities and to help the people of Guyana to live your country’s motto”.