GSFC medical centre requires attention

The medical facility at the Gujarat State Fertiliser & Chemicals (GSFC) that handles industrial accident is lying in shambles.

The accident at GSFC on Tuesday evening and subsequent mishandling of relief work by the management has raised labour unrest at the Vadodara plant.

The labour union is now demanding the company to revamp it medical facility.

Talking to the media, K M Patel, union leader of GSFC employee's union, said, "There is hardly any medical facility to handle industrial accident at the GSFC medical centre."

As a mark of irony, the injured labourers have been shifted to other private hospitals.

He further alleged that the management has asked the Union members not to talk to media and end the agitation.

The GSFC union members are staging dharna outside the GSFC gate from Wednesday.

The GSFC medical centre has only 16 beds and three burns treatment beds with air conditioner rooms, claims the company.

While it has three doctors, two industrial safety personal and six doctor consultants.

With this facility the company claims to cater the medical requirement of 6,500 employees and their family members.

The medical officer of the centre and additional general manager, Dr N C Kapoor, said the company has special arrangements to cater any untoward incident by roping in resources from other hospitals and company's like IPCL and IOCL.

The medical staff present at the press conference alleged that they were attacked by over 60 members during treatment of the injured labours at the medical centre.

Conforming this, Kapoor said, "We have been targeted by some members."

The injured include P K Shah, Dhiru D Parmar, K R Patel, D R Patel and B M Prajapati.

According to Patel, "The management has refused to meet us on the matter of improving the defunct medical facility in the company."

The injured employees were not given medical attention for at least one hour, alleged Patel. He further added that the management has suspended him and other two as they have raised their voices in the issue.

However, he said the GSFC employee's union will continue its agitation against the management and will not succumb to the pressure from management.

"We will continue our peaceful dharna and if the management does not heed to our demands we will go for strike", Patel said.

While briefing the media at the accident site, H P Pandya, general manager of production, said the incident occurred while restarting of the Sulfuric Acid (SA) 3 plant.

"Due to reasons not known there was a leakage which resulted into a small blast, injuring five employees," he said.