Sunyani — The President of the Brong-Ahafo Regional House of Chiefs, Okatakyie Agyemang Kudom has appealed to the Regional branch of the Ghana Bar Association to advice its members to help speed up all cases pending before the Judicial Committee of the House. He said constant adjournments of the cases were not helping them.

Okatakyie Agyemang Kudom made this appeal at the first general meeting of the house for the year 2008 in Sunyani.

According to the President, the House began the year 2007 with 54 chieftaincy cases, made up of 36 petitions and 18 appeals, which increased to 63 at the close of the year but due to lack of Counsel for most part of the year, the Judicial Committee could not sit to adjudicate on those cases.

He however stated that, the house was able to dispose off three cases between October and December after the appointment of Mr. P.K.O Mensah as counsel for the House in October last year. He noted that though the House had already started the year with 60 cases, he was hopeful that the cases would be dealt with as early as possible.

He appealed to members of the Regional Bar Association to encourage their clients to use the mediation process to settle some of the cases and also accept the outcome of the mediation.

The President noted that in most of the cases after the parties have submitted themselves to the mediation process they would go back to their lawyers to write to denounce the outcome of the mediation thus derailing the process.

He regretted that some of cases had been pending before the House for several years because the petitioners themselves are not showing any interest in pursuing them.

Okatakyie disclosed that the House would issue Registrar's summons to such Petitioners to show reason why those cases should not be struck out of the Case list.

He appealed to Chiefs who have cases before any judicial forum to exercise patience and restraint, and never resort to violence noting that violence and conflict have never benefited any society.

The President appealed to Nananom to contribute their quota to ensure that the chieftaincy cases in the region had been reduced by resorting to the traditional dispute resolution mechanism to solve some of the disputes in their traditional areas.

The Minister for Chieftaincy and Culture, Sampson Kwaku Boafo on his part urged Nananom to consider ways to ensure that the extended family system did not become extinct.

The Minister noted that in advanced countries where there was no extended family system. According to Mr. Boafo, Ghana could only avoid such a situation through the sustenance of the traditional family system.