The association says it was forced to take recourse to legal remedy as representations over the years at various fora did not yield the desired result. The 100-bed hospital, which was completed in 1993 at a cost of Rs 2.96 crore, was inaugurated in January last year.

According to the association, the corporation had promised the 50-bed hospital, to begin with, with all modern facilities and nearly Rs 70 lakh was reserved for purchasing medical equipment.

The inauguration, the expenses on which were born by the association, was the result of the pressure put on the corporation, the association says in its latest newsletter. However, even after 20 months of its inauguration, the hospital runs only an out-patient department and, that too, for only a couple of hours in the morning and the evening.

In the Vapi GIDC alone, some 906 units, involving as many as 43,000 people, are covered under the Employees State Insurance Scheme. If an average of four persons per family of the insured is taken into account, the hospital is expected to cater to not less than 1.72 lakh people. And the present arrangement with a couple of private hospitals is inadequate.

The corporation collects a whopping Rs 5 crore a year from employees and employers' contribution, but spends as little as Rs 60 lakh on disbursement of benefits. The private hospitals on the corporation's panel make unreasonable demands from those seeking treatment, the association says.

For want of prescribed form from the ESIS dispensary, accident victims requiring immediate medicare are forced to take treatment as private patients. The forms cannot be procured if accidents occur after the dispensary closes, and the insured victims are forced to buy medicines from the market, the association alleges.

It says it decided to move the High Court after receiving many complaints from workers. The association has sought a directive to make the hospital at Chanod operational with facility for 100 indoor patients, emergency medical services, speciality units, pathological laboratory, facility for investigation and a medical store that remains open round-the-clock.

The petitioner has also sought dispensaries at each village or group of villages to help the insured avail themselves of the services; a mobile dispensary for emergency; update of schedule of drugs and advanced investigation facilities, and drugs prescribed by medical practitioners.