Mangaluru : Members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) staged a protest outside the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) on Monday to pressure the ruling Congress to address basic issues in the city.

Earlier, the party activists took out processions to the corporation office at Lalbagh from Kankanady, Nanthoor, Urwa Stores and State Bank of India bus terminus.

Addressing a gathering, Sunil Kumar Bajal, secretary, Mangaluru city south committee, said that the corporation had not completed the sewer network project taken up with a loan from the Asian Development Bank over a decade ago. As a result, people in many parts of the city, especially in Surathkal, Hosabettu, Jeppinamogaru, Yekkur, and Bajal had not been able to connect sewer lines of their houses to manholes in the main network. The administration was very “poor”, he alleged.

Mr. Bajal said that many concrete roads in the city lacked footpaths for the past four years. He alleged that though the Congress came to power two years ago by promising that it would not hike the property tax, it broke the promise. Mr. Bajal said that the civic body had not provided housing sites for the poor for the past two decades.

He said that the corporation had not made any alternative arrangement for street vendors to do business. Though the corporation was bound to constitute ward committees under the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, they had remained a mirage.

The ruling Congress had failed to provide round-the-clock water supply to people. Though the city needed overpasses or sky walks at busy traffic junctions, the civic body had not bothered to build them, Mr. Bajal said. Many bus-shelters which were removed for road-widening had not been re-built, he said.

Mr. Bajal said that many markets in the city were in a poor condition and the city lacked public toilets too.