Fife's unsung heroes: Ian McKinlay

Fife has many unsung heroes who have gone the extra mile to help others during the coronavirus lockdown. They are working hard behind the scenes to make sure that our buses still run, our prescriptions dispensed, and our services all keep ticking over. They deserve their moment in the spotlight as part of our Big Thank You.

Ian McKinlay, from Kelty, is a network engineer with Openreach who has been making sure that people in Kirkcaldy have fully functioning broadband during the lockdown.

Ian said: “I’m part of a team that looks after and maintains the Openreach network in Kirkcaldy, we do a lot of work to ensure that people have working broadband and we have also been doing a lot of work upgrading households to superfast broadband.

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“There is a lot of proactive work that we do on the network to keep the broadband up and running for our customers, no two days are the same and I’m faced with a different challenge everyday.”

Ian, an armed forces veteran and former chef has worked with Openreach for four years and says that he is well looked after with employees and customers safety coming first.

He said: “We try to do as much of the work as possible outside, it has been a big learning curve to get used to all the new guidelines, but it has been necessary to keep our customers and ourselves safe.

“Life is definitely harder for people now, with an increase of people working from home and kids being homeschooled, there is a lot of people that rely on our service.

“Some of the measures that we have been taking includes Facetiming our customers before we make the call to find out if they are vulnerable or shielding, if they are we make every effort to make sure that social-distancing rules are adhered to.”

With Ian and his colleagues following strict guidelines when they enter someone's home he has no worries about contracting coronavirus.

Ian adds: “I don’t have any fears about the virus as I take all the proper steps to protect myself and stick to the guidelines.

“Hopefully everything will go back to normal soon, but I think that this will continue for quite some time, I’m looking forward to socialising with friends and family again and getting out with my kids.”

» To nominate someone for our Big Thank You please email [email protected]

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Thank you

Allan Crow, Editor, Fife Free Press