A private hire driver who didn’t inform the council when he was fined after a crash on Pollokshaws Road has been warned over his future conduct.
Abdu Jido’s car collided with another vehicle as he tried to turn on the South Side street in August 2019.
Police Scotland offered the driver a fixed penalty notice but he failed to pay the fine and was summoned to court, where he was ordered to pay £100. Mr Jido, who wasn’t working as a private hire driver at the time, also received points on his licence.
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Conditions of his private hire driver’s licence required him to inform the council’s licensing section of his conviction but he failed to do so.
The city’s licensing committee agreed to renew Mr Jido’s private hire car driver’s licence for three years but warned him over his future behaviour.
A Police Scotland representative told the committee that routine checks showed “the applicant has a previous conviction incurred since the licensing committee last considered his suitability to hold a licence”.
“This conviction was not declared on the application form,” he said, adding Mr Jido had been fined for driving a car “without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road”.
The officer said the driver had “failed to judge the distance between himself and another vehicle, and attempted to perform a turning manoeuvre, crossing the path of another vehicle and colliding with this vehicle”.
Mr Jido told the committee he gave the money to pay for the fixed penalty notice to his friends as he was out of the country, but this could not be accepted as his driving licence was required too.
He “didn’t know” why he hadn’t declared the conviction on his application but, in response to a question from Cllr Hanif Raja, he said: “English is not my first language so some of the content I can read but I cannot understand 100%.”
Cllr Raja said: “If you had any difficulty, why did you not come back to the licensing authority and say ‘I don’t understand the word, will you explain it to me’ or ask a translator or someone you know?
“Rather than not understanding, because your licence is your livelihood and you need to inform the licensing authority as soon as you have any convictions or anything.”
Mr Jido said he had tried to contact the council but hadn’t been able to due to office closures related to covid. He added he attempted to call but received no answer.
Cllr Alex Wilson, the licensing committee chairman, said: “We look upon this as very serious, the fact you’re not notifying the licensing section. It’s in the terms and condition of your licence and that’s something we urge all drivers to do.
“It shows you’re not fully reading the terms and conditions of your licence because if you had you would have put this on.”
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