A taxi driver who picked a teenage woman up from outside a pub in Birmingham and then subjected her to a sustained rape ordeal has been jailed for 10 years.

The 18-year-old victim was left profoundly traumatised by the attack and had considered committing suicide.

Insanullah Sarfaraz, 33, of Newmarket Way, Hodge Hill, who had previously admitted three charges of rape, was ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

Judge Mukherjee also made an indefinite sexual harm prevention order banning Sarfaraz, who is married and has four children, from working as a taxi driver in the UK.

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 DUBLIN

 A taxi driver has been convicted of sexually assaulting a young woman as he was bringing her home from a city centre pub.

Augustin Ion (49) groped the woman's breast and held her head back against the car seat outside her house. He also asked her to come with him into the back seat and asked if he could come into her house with her.

A jury with a 11 to one majority rejected Ion's claims that the woman was extremely aggressive, told him to “f**k off and drive” and refused to pay the fare.

He claimed she only made a complaint to gardaí because she thought he was going to report her for not paying him. Prosecuting counsel Eilis Brennan BL told the jury this was a “tissue of lies.”

The jury took just under three hours to return the guilty verdict following a single day of evidence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Ion has been released on bail pending sentence on January 23 next. The prosecution consented to bail on condition that Ion agreed not to drive a taxi in the meantime or to apply for a new passport.

Ion of Garrynisk Square, Tallaght, Dublin and originally from Romania had pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the woman outside her home on the night of November 20, 2014.

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 UBERK

 Abdurzak Hadi has worked as a minicab driver for 10 years, and as an Uber driver in London for nearly three. He came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia in 1992 and now has a young family but is struggling to support them.

His low pay is, like that of many Uber drivers, topped up by the state with working tax credits. His 10-year-old son has been receiving treatment for leukaemia and he hoped that being an Uber driver would allow him the flexibility to arrange his work around hospital appointments and collecting his other children from school, sharing the caring with his wife, but he says the reality has been very different.

Hadi regularly works about 40 hours a week for Uber. He says most of the drivers he knows work much longer hours to make ends meet but his children’s needs prevent him from doing so. Last week, after paying Uber 20% commission, he earned £557 before costs for a full working week; some weeks it has been much less. Newer drivers have 25% deducted.

He estimates that the costs for hiring his vehicle, paying public hire vehicle insurance, fuel, his licence fees, car cleaning and phone hire are about £285 a week, so his hourly earnings fell below the statutory “national living wage” of £7.20 an hour, if it applied.

In his previous job he could ask the operator to give him local jobs when he needed to come to the end of a shift, but he says he is unable to do that with Uber because he is penalised by being logged out if he turns down jobs that are too far away. “If I am self-employed I ought to be able to take jobs I want or not, but you don’t even know where the passenger is going.”

Hadi is one of 19 drivers who took Uber to an employment tribunal, which ruled that they were not self-employed, but workers entitled to basic rights, including the national living wage. Uber is appealing against the decision.

Although he has worked for different operators in the past, he says they have been undercut by Uber so are no longer recruiting, and he has nowhere else to go.

“At the beginning the money was really good because fares were higher but now they have cut them and flooded the market. Sometimes I have to wait well over an hour for a job. It’s taxpayers like you who are funding Uber at the moment because we are not earning enough and having to go to the government to ask for benefits.”

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 Taxi drivers in Scarborough borough look set to be forced to have their MOT tests done at a council depot.

The proposals are included in a new taxi policy, which a final decision will be made on in the new year.

In a recent public consultation, 75% of people said they disagreed with the idea.

Councillor Bill Chatt said:
"We have noticed there has been some serious issues lately, such as bald tyres, one car had a really bad brake pipe. Some of these vehicles were just two days, three days or a week through a test and they were found to have substantial faults. We're saying in other councils we've looked round, they do manage their own taxi MOT tests."

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 GLASGOW

 A TAXI driver has hit out after a woman who falsely accused him of attempted rape was today jailed for 13 months.

Willam Millar, 56, turned up at Glasgow Sheriff Court to see Fiona Scanlan, 40, jailed for her lies but admitted he didn’t think her sentence was long enough.

He said: “I’m relieved to a certain extent, personally I don’t think it was long enough.

“Hopefully it will send out a message that this kind of thing can’t be allowed to happen.

“Taxi drivers are vulnerable – hence the reason I got CCTV installed.

“To a certain extent she’s put women in danger, because now drivers are not wanting to pick up single drunk females.”

Scheming Scanlan, from Rutherglen, claimed William, 57, pulled into a secluded area before she was assaulted as he drove her home from a wedding.

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