The Gamey and Gamey Group, a leading ADR and labour management consultancy firm, in the quest to cut the rate of divorce cases in Ghana, has introduced a Post-Marital Counselling service to support the survival of marriages.
The service, which would be opened in the third quarter of this year, has the objective to build young marriages and salvage troubled ones.
Chief Executive Officer of the Group, Mr. Austin Gamey, who announced the move explained that the service would employ the Appreciative Inquiry and mediation principles to enable couples appreciate each other and focus only on positive issues in their marriages.
Speaking at the 2021 graduation ceremony of the Gamey and Gamey ADR Institute in Tema, he said the new service was to contribute to efforts towards reducing the high rate of divorce cases filed daily at the courts.
“Our service is not designed to help parties have a smooth divorce or discuss property sharing, alimony or child custody,” he said, indicating that the service was to assist couples to prevent divorce.
Mr. Gamey noted that the high incidence of divorce cases provided ample evidence that the current pre-marital counselling approach was inadequate, adding that couples rather need the counselling after starting marriage life.
“The increasing rate of collapsed marriages, especially young marriages, in the country has become alarming.
“Some of the marriages have collapsed in in the first month after wedding, and some have even collapsed during honeymoon.
“We are confident that post-marital counselling would help to save the situation,” he stressed.
A total of 29 professionals from diverse fields were graduated at the ceremony which had the theme, “Resolving disputes in an era of social distancing.”
The graduates, who constituted the 22nd cohort of the Institute’s masters programme, were awarded Professional Executive Master of Appropriate Dispute Resolution (PEM.ADR) certificates.
They are to practice as Arbitrators and Mediators to help in the resolution of disputes in various sectors of society.
Initiated in 2003, the Institute’s ADR course is the longest running top level ADR training in Africa, producing over 500 graduates over the years.
Touching on the theme, Mr. Gamey reminded the graduating class, and ADR practitioners in general that the dynamics of how conflicts emerged, and also got resolved, had changed as a result of the corona virus pandemic.
He said the reality was that many practitioners were recording a decline in cases they handled in the conventional face-to-face process, with more clients now opting for virtual interactions.
In that regard, he urged them to adopt Online Dispute Resolution facilities and Artificial Intelligence systems to aid their practice.
“You should pay attention to industry trends,” he advised, adding that by keeping abreast of the times, they would be prepared at all times to effectively deal with all manner of cases.
A Commissioner of the National Labour Commission, Mr. Fidelis Patrice Seddoh, who chaired the event, congratulated the graduands, and urged them to continue to enhance their capacity in order to overcome challenges in ADR practice.
He also commended the Gamey and Gamey ADR Institute for continually enriching the course content to respond to changing industry demands, and urged the new practitioners to practise with integrity.
President of the Class, Mrs. Elom Kudzo Adekahlor, in her report, thanked the facilitators for the impactful lessons which have helped to prepare the class members for the ADR profession.
“We commit to act as agents of change in our respective fields with integrity and dedication.
“We as ADR professionals will seek to help our organisations, social groups, communities, families and friends to settle disputes with the skills acquired from the programme, and we are looking forward to impacting the ADR landscape,” she said.
Marketing and Corporate Relations Director of Absa Bank, and the President of the new Cohort, Mrs. Nana Essilfuah Tamakloe, in a solidarity message, congratulated the graduating class for the achievement.
She said the decision to join the course to “unlearn and relearn” demonstrated bravery and a quest for continuous improvement and growth.
“It takes courage and a thirst for self-discovery, and the sheer willingness to be better, to come to this point where we find ourselves,” she stated, and expressed their full commitment to journey through the training programme.
