A KEIGHLEY private hire firm said one of its taxi drivers was punched and racially abused by a passenger.

Police are investigating the attack on an Oxford Taxis driver, which happened in Harewood Road shortly after 3pm on July 12.

Pervez Naik, the boss of Oakworth Road-based Oxford Taxis, said the incident was unacceptable, adding the trouble flared up after the taxi’s passengers claimed they did not have the money to pay the fare.

He said shortly after the assault happened, the man responsible had turned up at his company’s booking office and threatened and racially abused the calls operator.

“The driver who was attacked wasn’t badly hurt, but he was quite shaken,” Mr Naik added. “He’s been with us for a long time – about 15 years.

“As a company we are actually very understanding when passengers genuinely can’t pay for some good reason and ask if they can pay later instead.

“Fair enough if someone has fallen on hard times, but this was just completely out of order.”

He said the driver had responded to a call to pick up a woman and two men from Harewood Road, who asked to be taken to some local shops and to the post office in Bracken Bank.

Outside the post office, one of the men said he had been unable to take money out of his account, so would not be able to pay for the journey.

Mr Naik said despite this problem the driver had still agreed to take the group back home to Harewood Road, only to then be racially abused by the men and punched in the back of his neck by one of them.

Mr Naik said: “Our driver and the passengers got out of the car, and some people who were nearby shouted at the men to leave the driver alone, which we really appreciate.

“The passengers then left, but about half an hour later the same man who’d punched the driver came to our booking office and was racially abusive to our operator.”

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed officers were looking into the assault on the driver, which took place between 3.10pm and 3.15pm last Thursday.

He said witnesses or people with other information on what happened should contact the police’s 101 number, or get in touch via the 101 Live Chat facility on West Yorkshire Police’s website.

Mr Naik said verbally abusive behaviour towards his drivers or damage to their cars is so common the firm cannot alert the authorities to every such case.

“Unfortunately this kind of thing does happen all the time,” he said. “We can’t be constantly ringing in and reporting it, so a lot of it we just tend to brush off.”