A BUS driver has been sacked amid allegations of unseemly conduct with teenage girls.

But Gulum Mayat, 41, of Lambert Street, Blackburn, denied the allegations at a disciplinary hearing earlier this week and plans to seek legal advice over his dismissal from Cranberry Coachways of Walmsley Street, Rishton.

During the hearing North Western deputy traffic commissioner Patrick Mulvenna considered revoking Mr Mayat's licence to drive public service vehicles after hearing how five teenage girls made allegations against him.

Det Sgt Rob Campbell, of Darwen CID, began investigating in May when he received a complaint from the father of an 18-year-old girl and obtained further statements from four other girls, including two 16-year-olds and a 13-year-old.

Mr Campbell told the hearing he may have had reservations about the girls' stories if they had known each other but they did not.

He went on: "I formed the impression that they were telling the truth but there will be no criminal charges brought because none of the girls regard these incidents as particularly serious, just not proper conduct for a bus driver."

Mr Mayat, who spoke through an interpreter, said he had worked for Cranberry Coachways for four months and never laid hands on anyone. He said he had not threatened to make the girls undo their jackets or touched one of them on the chest or offered them food or cigarettes.

He told the hearing: "These girls are a menace to society as they have humiliated me. Because of these girls I have lost my job." Mr Mayat said he had been dismissed without any disciplinary hearing and was currently unemployed. He agreed there had been occasions when there had been a single girl on his bus and that he thrown three girls off when they were messing with his sandwich box.

He told the hearing he did not know why they had made the complaints but perhaps they were racist.

Speaking from the family home after the hearing, his wife said: "We are going to see a solicitor because when he was sacked there was no hearing or anything.

"My husband speaks English very poorly and doesn't understand. This has taken a toll on us but we are managing."

Recording a formal warning against Mr Mayat, Mr Mulvenna said that on the balance of probabilities he thought there had been conduct that was less than he would expect of a professional public service vehicle driver.

He added: "It is perhaps as well for Mr Mayat that it had been nipped in the bud. If there is any repetition of anything approaching this kind of behaviour in the future the licence will be revoked."

A spokesman for Cranberry Coachways said the company did not wish to comment.

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