Speech by Chairman of HKMAAL, Mr John Budge, SBS, MBE, JP at the HKMAAL 1st Anniversary Celebration
2013年10月11日
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The Secretary for
Justice, The Hon Mr Rimsky Yuen SC, The Hon Mr Justice Johnson Lam VP,
distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to this
evening’s event, celebrating the 1st Anniversary of HKMAAL.
As you are all
aware, HKMAAL has been set up to create the premier accreditation body for
mediators in Hong Kong discharging both accreditation and disciplinary
functions. Our long term goal is to eventually form a single accreditation
system in Hong Kong. I am delighted to
share with you the good progress we have made to date.
On membership, we
now have 8 corporate members, with the Hong
Kong Institute of Arbitrators, CEDR Asia Pacific, the Hong Kong Institute of
Surveyors and the Hong Kong Institute of Architects joining us in the past few months.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome them all. On this positive
note, we welcome other
accreditation bodies in Hong Kong to apply to join HKMAAL as corporate members. I am grateful to Mr Thomas So who chairs the Working Party on Membership to
assist us in considering membership applications.
I am also pleased
to inform you that HKMAAL is now one of the largest accreditation bodies in
Hong Kong. We now have 1108 mediators on our Panels of Mediators, including 989
General Mediators, 92 Family Mediators and 27 Family Mediation Supervisors.
In order to
standardize the accreditation procedure, the Working Group on Accreditation
Standards chaired by Mrs Robyn Hooworth has endeavoured to come up with common
standards of accreditation. We
have conducted 2 Forums to seek stakeholders’ view on the accreditation
standards for family
mediators and general mediators. The forums were well attended by over 70
stakeholders and we have incorporated their comments to form the common
standards. Robyn and her
Working Group have completed this arduous task in a matter of a few months and starting
from July, we have run 3 Stage 2 Assessments based on the new standards. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Robyn and
her hardworking group for their good work.
I am particularly grateful
to my fellow Council Members, Mr Francis Law from the Hong Kong Mediation
Centre, Mrs Cecilia Wong from the Law Society of Hong Kong, Mr Kumar Ramanathan
SC from the Hong Kong Bar Association, The Hon Mr Justice Barnabas Fung and Ms Gilly
Wong
from the Consumer Council. I am also grateful to the members of the
HKMAAL Mediation Accreditation Committee for their guidance. I would also like to thank the Department of
Justice,
in particular Mr. Rimsky Yuen, Simon Lee and the Mediation Team. The Judiciary have also been very
supportive and in particular Mr. Justice Johnson Lam and Ms. April Lam for their support. Finally I
would like to thank the HKIAC Secretariat for their assistance during the last year. |
