Setting Up Community Dispute Resolution Tribunal

Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (a) when will the Community Dispute Resolution Tribunal be set up; (b) what approach will the Tribunal take to resolve disputes between neighbours; and (c) how will the Tribunal be resourced to cope with the increasing numbers of such disputes.

Madam, the Community Dispute Management Framework (CDMF) is a holistic effort to address community disputes and to promote a more gracious and pleasant living environment for all. Our efforts, in partnership with the community, are focused not just on resolving disputes but also encouraging considerate neighbourly behaviours which are vital to preventing community disputes from arising in the first place. Community-based responses, such as informal mediation by community leaders, and enforcement against anti-social behaviour will be strengthened as part of this framework to resolve community disputes early.

The Community Dispute Resolution Tribunal, which the Member asked about, will be an avenue of last resort to adjudicate long-standing, intractable disputes between neighbours. This is meant as a last recourse after all attempts at resolving what are essentially private matters have been exhausted.

The Tribunal will be established under the auspices of the State Courts, and is slated to be in operation next year. We are working with MinLaw to develop the legislative framework for the Tribunal, and there will be a public consultation on the draft legislation within the

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next few months.

Essentially, the Court processes and hearings of the Tribunal will be made more streamlined so that long-running disputes can be resolved expeditiously and effectively. Mediation, which is a process that encourages parties to seek a mutually-acceptable solution, will be a key prerequisite for the Tribunal. So, the person who applies to have the dispute heard by the Tribunal must first attempt to mediate with the respondent. If the respondent refuses the applicant's invitations to mediate, the Tribunal can order the parties to attend pre-hearing mediation and record any agreement as a consent order of the Tribunal that can then be enforced accordingly.

We recognise that resources are required to support the effective implementation of the framework and we are working closely with MOF to ensure that the framework, including the Tribunal, will be adequately resourced.

I do agree with the Minister that the Tribunal will be the last resort and we should try to avoid that if possible. But I want to ask the Minister whether this adjudication approach is the only way to compel the resident to behave or act, or are there other ways like the enforcement approach where we can have specific penalty issued by maybe the Police or the HDB officers, or even demerit points systems that some jurisdictions have. In Hong Kong, they have demerit points for households and so on.

So, whether we want to look also at the enforcement approach. Going into adjudication will be really the last resort. The neighbour disputes can be resolved but there will never be neighbourliness between them.

Secondly, it appears that a minority of the residents still are not conscious of what constitutes anti-social behaviour or socially irresponsible behaviour. On that front, whether the MCCY will want to step up on the education and publicity, especially when the new residents move into the flats, and so on, will conduct themselves in a socially responsible way.

Madam, we will certainly step up our public education and public awareness efforts. That is part of the framework which I talked about because we do not want to go to the Tribunal immediately. We want to have residents take ownership of their own community and resolve problems on their own. Certainly, public education is something that we will be doing more of.

We are also going to work through different mechanisms and not just through the Tribunal alone, primarily through informal mediation. We will be providing training for more

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grassroots leaders, for example, to be able to do such mediation.

The Member talked about enforcement. Enforcement is an approach that works hand-in-hand with the Tribunal. To enforce, you need to have an order; you need to have something to enforce against. The difficulty with enforcement when you are dealing with a private dispute is what do you enforce? Whose side do you decide is saying the right thing? Somebody says "A", the other person says "B". But this is a dispute between two parties, so, what do you enforce, how do you enforce?

That is why you need to go to a Tribunal first. And the Tribunal can then issue a specific performance or injunction, for example, to say that, "This person has been a nuisance, has been behaving in a way that is socially irresponsible, and so, there will be no loud music to be played between these stipulated times." Then that injunction can be enforced. In parallel with the Tribunal, we are also working with MHA to see how we can beef up some of these community enforcement processes.