Justice on Wheels expands to include mediation cases

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines — The Supreme Court’s Enhanced Justice on Wheels (EJOW) in this city has been expanded to include mediation hearings in addition to its usual handling of cases involving detention of prisoners.

On August 25, all seven branches or salas of the Regional Trial Court in Tacloban will be doing whole-day EJOW to be witnessed by officials from SC, particularly the Philippine Judicial Academy and the Philippine Mediation Center Office-EJOW Committee.

Executive Judge Alphinor Serrano said the RTCs in Tacloban is now preparing for that day, with activities that would be more than the EJOW launching several years ago.

Besides the promulgations of judgment by all RTC branches in the city, other activities will be jail visitations, with medical and dental services, to the City Jail and the Leyte Provincial Jail, dialogue among SC officials, judges and invited government officials, and orientation-lecture on Strategic Planning Management System among clerks of court and court personnel.

Serrano, however, said the EJOW bus will only be in Tacloban until August 25 this year, after it served as temporary sala for newly created branches, such as the Branch 43, presided by Vice Executive Judge Evelyn Riños-Lesigues, and the Branch 44, presided by Judge Eligio Petilla.

The EJOW bus, parked for long time now at the compound of RTC Tacloban, since it was brought here after Yolanda in 2013, and served as a sala for typhoon-destroyed courts here, will now be used as a regular court sala by Branches 43 and 44, under a sharing system.

SC Deputy Court Administrator Thelma Bahia wrote Serrano to coordinate with the judges of the new branches and informed him that the SC will soon construct a new building, as part of the rehabilitation of the damaged City Hall of Justice.

“The procurement of a Detailed Architectural and Engineering Design (DAED)Consultant that shall come up with the resilient and green building design will be initiated within the year by the Bids and Awards Committee for the Hall of Justice (BAC-HOJ),” Bahia stated in the letter.

Besides the EJOW, the SC has initiated schemes for the speedy disposition of cases, one of which is the Judicial Dispute Resolution where judges themselves conduct the mediation hearing. “The court also participates in the mediation, not only the Philippine Mediation Center through the JDR,” Serrano told The Freeman.

This mediation procedure can be done in the EJOW bus in areas where there are no courts or mediation offices available. It will travel to Samar on its return to the SC compound at Padre Faura in Manila.

Meanwhile, the new set of officers and directors of the Philippine Association of Court Employees-Region 8 chapter took their oath of office before Judge Lesigues. (FREEMAN)