The Legislative Assembly’s 3rd Standing Committee is currently examining the government-initiated family mediation bill – and lawmaker-cum-lawyer Vong Hin Fai, the committee chair, highlighted in a post-meeting press briefing yesterday that the members of the committee are urging the government to explicitly define the rights, obligations, and responsibilities of family mediators, adding that his fellow members raised during yesterday’s meeting their concerns regarding the fairness, impartiality, openness and reasonableness of the processes involved in appointing the mediators, allocating family mediators, and coordinating training activities by the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS).
The standing committee held a closed-door meeting at 10 a.m. yesterday to discuss the bill on the family mediation system until about 12:30 p.m.
After the meeting, Vong told the media that yesterday’s meeting focused on the scope of the bill, the mediation process, and the rights, obligations and responsibilities of family mediators. He noted that the committee spent considerable time discussing the selection of family mediators.
The bill proposes that if a family case involves domestic violence, it must first proceed to mediation. If mediation is not successful, the family mediator will halt the process and issue a mediation report or certificate, which one of the spouses can then use to directly apply for divorce proceedings. The family mediators should be social workers from the Social Welfare Bureau or social workers registered under the professional social work system of social service organisations, from a list of family mediators compiled by the government.
According to Vong, there are currently more than 30 non-government community service centres in Macau, with about 2,000 registered social workers. Regarding family mediators, Vong referenced a roster jointly published at the end of last year by the Departments of Justice in Guangdong and Hong Kong, as well as the Legal Affairs Bureau in Macau, which lists over 170 mediators, including 49 who are Macau residents. Vong pointed out that insofar as the mediators concerned did not have social worker qualifications, they would be excluded from the bill’s scope, raising concerns among some of his fellow members during yesterday’s meeting.
Vong quoted government officials from earlier meetings on the matter, noting yesterday that social workers would be selected as family mediators through the community service centres or social service agencies with which they are affiliated. He added that the committee would seek further clarification from the government on the potential issue that the existing bill does not specify the remuneration of social workers acting as mediators, including their attendance fees, travelling expenses and other related costs, with a view to ensuring the fairness, reasonableness and transparency of the role of social workers as mediators, as well as the legality and openness of the selection mechanism.
The bill has added a new clause, bringing the total to 24 clauses, with the new clause pertaining to the time frame for filing a lawsuit. Vong cited the Civil Code as noting that the non-fault party has three years to initiate divorce proceedings; if this time limit is exceeded, the court will not accept the case. He added that the government has accepted the committee’s recommendation to introduce a provision for suspending the peremption*, suggesting that if pre-action mediation is initiated, the peremption period of 60 days or more would be suspended to safeguard the rights of the non-fault party, i.e., the victim.
Vong pledged that the committee will invite government officials to its upcoming meetings again, aiming to complete the scrutiny of the bill by early next month.
*The term refers to a fixed, non-extendable time limit after which a legal right or claim is supposed to be irrevocably extinguished. - DeepSeek
Lawmaker-cum-lawyer Vong Hin Fai (left) and lawmaker-cum-unionist Leong Sun Iok pose during a press briefing about yesterday’s closed-door meeting of the Legislative Assembly’s 3rd Standing Committee. – Photo: Yuki Lei
