Kali­fa Clyne

In­stead of tak­ing civ­il mat­ters to the court­room, res­i­dents of Tu­na­puna now have the al­ter­na­tive of solv­ing dis­putes through a me­di­a­tion ser­vices cen­tre. This was re­vealed by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment An­to­nia Pop­plewell. Pop­plewell was speak­ing at the launch of a mul­ti-pur­pose so­cial ser­vices build­ing in Tu­na­puna on Fri­day. Pop­plewell said the me­di­a­tion ser­vice be­ing of­fered pro­vid­ed an al­ter­na­tive to the court sys­tem and was in fact wel­comed by Tu­na­puna mag­is­trates. Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Me­di­a­tion Ser­vices, Bev­er­ly Har­ry-Em­manuel, said the pur­pose of the me­di­a­tion unit would be to en­cour­age prob­lem solv­ing.

She said the me­di­a­tor was there to man­age ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween con­flict­ing par­ties and fo­cused on dis­putes with­in com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies. The build­ing al­so hous­es nor­mal so­cial ser­vice op­tions, such as so­cial wel­fare and pover­ty re­duc­tion ser­vices, TTCard ser­vices and a tele­cen­tre, all of which are free to res­i­dents. The tele­cen­tre of­fers free train­ing in com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy as well as use of com­put­ers to the pub­lic. It al­so of­fers busi­ness ser­vices to en­tre­pre­neurs and small busi­ness­es such as fax and copy­ing ma­chines and a con­fer­ence room. Pop­plewell said the pur­pose of the fa­cil­i­ty was to re­duce pow­er­less­ness, so­cial ex­clu­sion and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by em­pow­er­ing res­i­dents through knowl­edge-based ac­tiv­i­ties.