No boost to broadband despite making hundreds of NHS face guards
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A CAITHNESS man manufacturing personal protection equipment (PPE) for health workers has been knocked back in his attempt to get help from a major mobile network operator.
Wick High School computing science teacher Chris Aitken is leading a team of volunteers across the county who are selflessly making PPE visors and masks with 3D printers.
"We're at 990 visors and 190 masks at the moment," Chris said on Monday afternoon.
At the weekend, Chris had posted a message on Twitter, copying in mobile phone giant and internet service provider EE: "Any chance of a data boost on my 4g broadband? I'm spending my days producing hundreds of face guards for @NHS."
The mobile provider is giving NHS staff free unlimited mobile data on top of their usual 20 per cent discount for six months until October 9 for their "tremendous work during the coronavirus crisis".
Chris, who lives at Gills, thought he might have got some help with the extra costs he is incurring for using the service to create protective masks and visors.
He said: "With regard to EE, I put out a tweet asking for more data because we're in a rural area with no reliable fixed-line broadband and so we use 4G broadband which works great – but we have a quota that we have to adhere to every month.
"With us being at home the whole time and spending every day making masks and visors we're using a lot more data, so thought I'd ask."
However, the Twitter response from an EE staff member called Menza on Saturday morning said: "Unfortunately, this offer is only available to pay monthly customers who are NHS staff with a valid NHS email address."
Numerous responses to Menza's message showed a clear sense of indignation from Chris's Twitter followers.
A woman with the username Katathenty said: "That’s mean EE. I think your management can do better than that. This guy is working long hours for free to support the NHS and save lives.
"You want customers to stay with you after this don’t you? Think I might switch!"
One Twitter user called Theresa Swayne even asked film actor Kevin Bacon, who fronts an EE advertising campaign on TV, to help out.
Chris has organised a team of people across the far north into a specialist 3D printing group.
Graham and Alan Ball, Saulius Kazakauskas, Sergio Sanz and Colin Thain have been working in coordination with Wick and East Caithness councillor Raymond Bremner to make and deliver the PPE.
Alan Ball said: "I have been 3D printing for 18 months. It's a steep learning curve but amazing to be able to produce things that are unavailable to the NHS – something we couldn't have dreamt of doing 20 years ago.
"Having the support of the 3D printing group has been a great help."
Chris said he had been "really humbled" by the community response, not only in terms of monetary donations but in rallying round to help with elastic and acetate for the visors.
"We're now sitting at £10,000 in donations and we've spent £6000 on supplies and parts so far."
The team are now reaching out to Sutherland and Orkney to see if their services could be used in those areas.
“The demand for PPE from NHS staff and carers has been huge since we started three weeks ago," Chris said.
"I'm so grateful to have a team of dedicated engineers from all over Caithness working flat out to help keep our NHS staff and private carers safe."
Councillor Raymond Bremner has been involved with supporting the team since the early stages and initially helped Chris by introducing him to a friend who was also using a 3D printer to make PPE.
He helped launch an appeal and within 24 hours a small team had been created.
"By the time a couple of days had gone by there were funding streams being put in place coming from all sorts of avenues. The response has been phenomenal," he said.
"I was involved in speaking to folk who had the ability to access wind farm funding and those discussions have been successful in a short period of time. The project moved forward very quickly."
The councillor said it had been a "pleasure" to work with Chris and the team on the project.
"There are a lot of people working behind the scenes and they have been an invaluable support,” he said.
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