Legislation passed on Alternate Dispute Resolution will provide justice to common men: Wahab

The adviser said that Sindh was the first province to pass bill on ADR

KARACHI: Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister (CM) on Information, Law and Anti-Corruption, Barrister Murtaza Wahab has asked police officers to focus on policing instead of policymaking.

He was talking to media after an International Conference on Alternative Dispute Resolution at a local hotel, organised by the Sindh Judicial Academy in collaboration with Legal Aid Society on Saturday.



The aim of the conference was to focus on mediation, including regional advances from around Asia. It shared a range of success stories of formal Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism from both the national and international level so that newly trained meditators could benefit in terms of enhancing their understanding and interest in mediation.

Wahab said that the provincial assembly at the start of the year passed a bill through which the role of the Saalis (arbitrator) was made persuasive. Wahab said that Sindh was the first province to pass such legislation that would empower the mediator and to facilitate the people who wanted out-of-court settlements.

He said that the sole aim of this legislation was to provide justice to common men.

The adviser also said that the provincial assembly had been playing its due role for long and now it was up to the honourable judges to achieve what they cherished the most. He said that sustainable change could only be achieved when all three organs of the state worked together to bring about the solutions to problems that were being faced by the people of the country.

He ensured that any executive intervention if and when needed to make the process of ADR more effective would be provided by the Sindh government without ado. Sindh High Court Chief Justice  Ahmed Ali Shaikh, former judge of Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan and Chairperson Legal Aid Society Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, former Judge of SC and Director-General of Sindh Judicial Academy Justice Khilji Arif Husain, former Judge of SC Justice Ghulam Rabbani and district and sessions judge of Karachi West Khalid Hussain Shahani spoke at the conference.



Later, while speaking to the media, Wahab said that the police officers should focus on maintaining law and order which was their principle job.

He regretted that Irshad Ranjhani was shot but police remained mere spectators. Wahab said that during the two days of the police conference where all the high officials of police were present, five murders were reported across the province. The adviser said that the real job of the police was to do policing and maintain the law and order rather than attending the conferences.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2019.