£3K ‘EXPENSES’ OF A COUNCILLOR LIVING IN INDIA

Yusuf Sidat, not pictured, has attended two meetings since May but received £3,000 in allowances

Tuesday December 15,2009

By Chris Riches

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A TOWN councillor who has been living in India for the past four months while still being paid by council tax payers is facing the sack.

Councillor Yusuf Sidat has attended only two meetings since May, the last one in June, but in that time has received £3,000 in allowances – the equivalent of £1,500 per meeting.

Only last year Mr Sidat was welcomed back into the Lib-Dem fold on Blackburn with Darwen Council in Lancashire after jetting off to India for three months. Residents have been unable to contact him for help or advice and council bosses have not been able to speak to him.

He has now been expelled from the Liberal Democrat group and will have to stand down if he has not attended a meeting by Christmas Day.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance said it was a “disgrace” that more effort was not made to track down Mr Sidat, who is paid an annual allowance of £6,000.

Susie Squire, the Alliance’s political director, said: “It’s all very well for the council to threaten to take his privileges away now, but this action should have been taken the minute it became clear that he was taking taxpayers’ money and yet performing no duties to merit his allowances.”

Mr Sidat risked the wrath of party leaders when he spent from January to March in India last year.

Yesterday, Lib-Dem group leader David Foster said: “We have high expectations of our councillors. Councillor Sidat, due to his absence, has failed to live up to these expectations and to provide the standard of service to his constituents that Liberal Democrats demand from councillors.”