Piotr Wojtacha, Vice-President of the State Mining Authority, received the Halina Krahelska Award

On Thursday, 18 November, the awards ceremony of the Chief Labour Inspector took place at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. On behalf of the Marshal of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek, the event was attended by Deputy Marshal Małgorzata Gosiewska. The ceremony was hosted by Katarzyna Łażewska-Hrycko, Chief Labour Inspector. This year's special award was presented, among others, to Piotr Wojtacha, Vice-President of the State Mining Authority.

Piotr Wojtacha is a graduate of the Faculty of Mining at the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Kraków, where he graduated in mining and geology, specialising in underground deposit mining technology, and postgraduate studies in management and marketing in business at the Faculty of Organisation and Management of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. From 1979 to 1991 he worked in the coal mine "Gliwice". in Gliwice. From 1991 to the present he has been an employee of the mining supervisory authorities. He worked his way up through the mining authorities, starting as a superintendent at the District Mining Authority in Gliwice. From 2002 to 2010, he was successively Deputy Director and Director of the Regional Mining Authority in Gliwice. Since 2010, he has worked at the State Mining Authority, initially as Director of the Department of Environmental Protection and Deposit Management, and since 2014 as Vice President of the State Mining Authority. From 1 June 2016 to 28 February 2017, he performed the duties of President of the State Mining Authority on the instructions of the Prime Minister. He holds a number of geological and mining qualifications, including, among others, to act as a geologist in categories 02, IV, VI and XII, as a mining geologist and as a manager of a mining plant movement in underground and opencast mines.

During his 30 years with the mining supervisory authorities, he was involved in practically all administrative and inspection and technical activities. Due to his specialised professional background, he has previously and currently supervised, coordinated and inspected the activities of district mining offices and the Specialised Mining Office in relation to the operation of underground, opencast and borehole mining plants, in particular in the area of: management of mineral deposits in the process of their extraction, environmental protection, damage prevention, operation of occupational safety management systems, training of persons carrying out activities in the mining plant's operation, combating factors which are harmful and arduous to health.

The Halina Krahelska Award was established in 1989 by the Chief Labour Inspector in recognition of Krahelska's contribution to the development of labour inspection in Poland.