George Agricola Medal for OKD and Contractor Experts

OSTRAVA/PRAGUE – Six experts, who are active in OKD, the mining company, received the “George Agricola” (Mining Industry) Medal from Ivo Pěgřímek, Chairman of the Czech Mining Office. On the occasion of the name-day of St. Barbara, the miners’ patron, this supreme mining award is granted to those who have merit in the mining industry development in a special and unique manner.

One day prior to the Award Granting Ceremony, the six awarded persons were received by Klaus-Dieter Beck, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors, together with Leo Bayer, Chief Operating Officer, in Ostrava. They congratulated the awarded persons on having achieved such significant success and thanked them for their long-lasting extraordinary performance. “It is an excellent award, which you deserve and which you can rightly be proud of,” K. D. Beck said to the awarded persons. “The fact that the awarded persons also include an employee of one of our contractors proves the fact that these people are members of our large mining family,” he pointed out.

The awarded persons were pleased to have been able and to be able to participate in introducing such a great deal of new state-of-the-art technologies into practice, which was rather an exception in the past. They also declared that they also considered their awards as an acknowledgement of the work of their predecessors and current colleagues. The George Agricola Medal is an encouragement for them to fulfil other tasks.

The George Agricola Medal was awarded to:

Bronislav Batorek

Karel Sniegoň

Lubomír Palla

Richard Pavlík

Václav Smička

Tadeusz Pieczka

The establishers of the Commemorative “George Agricola Medal” are the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic and the Czech Mining Office. This Medal is awarded to workers of organizations being subject to the State Mining Administration supervision, workers of the State Mining Administration, ministries and central authorities engaged in the mining industry and workers of other industries who have contributed to the mining industry development in a special and unique manner.

Who George Agricola was

The George Agricola Commemorative Medal bears its name after the mining nestor (George Agricola), who, as the first person, wrote (in 12 books) a comprehensive document on the mining and metallurgy industries. In the mining industry, his work has become a fundamental document, and a lot of instructions and basic principles still apply to the current miners.

(Josef Lys)