By Africa 24 newsman

The All People’s Congress (APC) Party in Sierra Leone on Monday announced the removal of the moratorium on the party’s membership drive.

The APC, in a release, signed by its National Secretary General (NSG) confirmed the recommencement of membership registration and verification of members of the party.

NSG, Lansana Dumbuya, in an interview with this medium via telephone, assured the general public that the process will be transparent, adding “This laudable drive will sanitize our party’’.

The release explained the need for the registration and verification, noting the court-ordered arrangement recently necessitated a temporary registration which is evidenced with lot of discrepancies in the membership data.

The APC states that the register inherited by the current secretariat from the Interim Transition Governance Committee (ITGC) saw a lot of duplications of registration numbers, and a stockpiles of unattended membership application forms, and the proliferation of fake membership cards, and payment receipts, among others, being accounted for as major challenges the National Secretariat had observed.

Explaining the exercise further, the release states that the registration/verification is in line with the party’s constitution and that the membership application will emanate from districts while the final approval will be done by the National Secretary General.

“The process will be undertaken by all pertinent organs and units of the party including but not limited to secretariat officers, regional and district chairmen and secretaries, extended National Advisory Committee (NAC) representatives drawing from parliament, local councils, former standard bearer aspirants, elder council, legal team, former ministers, former parliamentarians, and representatives of the diaspora and affiliate groups, ” the release stated.

” The office of the National Organizing Secretary shall facilitate the recruitment drive as stipulated in the party’s constitution with the support of the local guarantors of the party, national financial secretary, and officer-in-charge of the IT Department before the final approval of the National Secretary General.”

The leaders said the process will commence with the verification/registration of executive members at all levels, followed by the verification/ registration of existing members including other new members, the release added, noting the exercise will run for months not longer than a year.

Existing members will not lose their data of registration, they said.

“The exercise will be launched in the Western Region on Wednesday 31st July followed by a similar event in the eastern region, southern region, northern region, and northwestern region, the release concluded.”