Zero absence on “first shift”

STAŘÍČ – Eyes popped out of head and mouth wide open so that guide Jan Kopel decided to start up a mine fan for a while. Those were the first minutes spent by the current mining apprentices from the Secondary Technical and Services School Karviná in the environment to become – ideally for all of them – their work area. They were taken on a field trip to a training mine gallery in the Paskov Mine!

They came by bus, which contained twenty first-year mining fitter apprentices and eight mining electrician apprentices. No one was absent and all present apprentices were bursting with curiosity. It was their first trip to the mine, though the Staříč mine gallery is open to the public.  “We informed them on what will await them, and they could make a picture,” said Lubomír Bembenek, senior mechanical teacher at the Secondary Technical and Services School.

Even though a considerable number of the apprentices come from miners’ families, they themselves admitted that the reality rather differed from what they had heard at home. “It would be a good place to play hide-and-seek …” some of them were teasing when light went off and it was pitch–dark there. As soon as guide Kopel however started up various (fully functional) machines, their teasing was replaced by their respect for mining technologies.

“Look carefully. You, fitters will adjust the hydraulic rollers of dam doors or repair the belt conveyors. Electricians will take notice of cabling and connections,” the teachers instructed the apprentices. Among the pedagogues, there were also “veterans” of the Czech mining educational system, whose one epoch closed twenty years ago. Now they are back to educate the next mining generation at the Secondary Technical and Services School.

“You have an easy life since you are historically the first ones in the new epoch. However at the same time, it’s also difficult for you because no one has learnt this for a long time,” said František Kurial, Human Resources Specialist, OKD, who is in charge of the apprentices. Afterwards, he sent the future mining fitters and electricians back to elementary school and asked them to find among their friends further pupils interested in the fields supported by the OKD Scholarship Programme.

(Radek Lukša)