KARACHI: (Staff Reporter) Legal Aid Society (LAS) organized a One-day paralegals’ refresher training program on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) at a local hotel in Karachi.
The paralegals from Karachi and Hyderabad were imparted the exclusive training.
ADR refers to any method of resolving disputes without litigation. ADR regroups all processes and techniques of a conflict resolution that occur without any government authority. Mediation, Arbitration, Conciliation, Negotiation and Transaction are called the most famous ADR tools.
Legal Aid Society is working on Alternate Dispute Resolution for the last five years to improve the supply and demand of ADR in eight districts of Sindh and enabled ordinary citizens to file their grievances before the ADR forums.
Talking to the media, Abbas Ali, the ADR programme manager of LAS, said that they have established a sustainable mechanism whereby communities can effectively reach out to relevant ADR providers for quick and effective resolution of their justified legal needs.
“LAS has trained 192 ADR paralegals in eight districts of Sindh. The huge Community ADR Network (CAN) consisting of Sixty-four ADR paralegals groups has been established. More than 1000 cases have been resolved in the shortest period of last six months. The ADR paralegals have already been prepared to educate members of the community who are involved or interested in social work on a volunteer basis. LAS has also prepared a cadre of trained Salis members in almost all the districts of Sindh in the past,” elaborated Abbas.
Sharing their mixed views, the paralegals said that potential cases are being identified and referred towards ADR mechanisms, including Offices of the Ombudsman. “In their communities, awareness sessions are continuously taking place and communities are widely having benefits of cost and time effective solutions of their disputes,” they opined.
Paralegals from Karachi and Hyderabad also highlighted the challenges they are facing in the field, and shared some suggestions for improvement as well.
The one-day ADR event had an exclusive presence of Angbeen Atif Mirza and Maham Shahzad as consultants. The both trainers through effective learning methods provided training to all the paralegals in highly official manners.
LAS team members, including Syed Taimoor Ali Shah, Zahid Hussain, Nazia Sultana, Ahsan Mashood , Zahid Ali Messo and Zohaib Shaikh, also played an active role to make the program successful.
