A council worker who pretended to be his brother for five years has been sacked.

Naheem Shah started out as a street cleaner and worked his way up to become a night supervisor at Bradford's Harris Street cleansing depot.

But all the time he was pretending to bosses that he was his 34-year-old brother, who has a simillar name, Naheed. Meanwhile Naheed was at home looking after his disabled daughter.

And when Naheem, 35, finally came clean about his double life, Bradford Council suspended him. Now he has been sacked after disciplinary hearings and his union, the GMB, said today it was supporting his appeal against dismissal.

Today Naheem, of Maidstone Street, Bradford, said he had impersonated his brother - both born in Britain - because Naheed was trying to bring his wife to this country from Pakistan to be reunited with their ten-year-old daughter.

Before a tightening up of the immigration laws in 1997, applicants for jobs with Bradford Council were not asked for identification. But Naheem said he did take his brother's birth certificate to the interview.

He added: "We totally swapped our roles because Naheed cannot get a job because he has to care for the little girl all the time. He claimed benefits in my name and I worked in his.

"His wife hasn't been allowed into Britain but the application is always looked at more favourably if you have a job."

He said they had made numerous attempts to get a visa for Farzana Bibi Shah and were now appealing against refusal.

Naheed Shah, of Tivoli Place, Bradford, said: "He did it to help me. I am still trying to get my wife to Britain." He said his daughter, Farza Komal Naheed, had developed pneumonia at the age of one in Pakistan and the oxygen was cut off to her brain, leaving her with paralysis and movement difficulties.

He said she had just had an operation on the tendons and muscles of one heel and had physiotherapy twice a week. "We talk to my wife by telephone but we need her here. My brother was doing everything he could think of to help me," he added.

Naheem, whose name is very similar to his brother's, said: "I had been using Naheed's name since I got the job in 1993, but it was always a strain, and I knew that one day it would get out. In the end I decided to tell them, because I didn't want to live a lie any longer."

He added: "I started out as a street sweeper and I became a night shift supervisor.

"I was a brilliant worker and I didn't get anything I wasn't entitled to. It was all to help my brother and the little girl. She hasn't seen her mother for five years. I worked a lot of hours and did a very good job. There was never any complaint about my work.

"Everyone at work just called me Nimmy and it didn't matter who I was. Nobody got anything they were not entitled to. The money just went to the wrong name. Nobody lost out."

Bradford Council has sacked Naheem on the grounds that he used a false name which resulted in the Council paying national insurance and superannuation and deducting income tax in respect of the wrong person. It also alleged he had falsely claimed housing benefit.

He denies benefit fraud and is challenging the sacking because he says the impersonation - which he admitted - should have been considered separately from the benefit allegations.

A regional GMB spokesman said: "We are supporting him in his appeal." He would not comment on the grounds of the challenge.

A Council spokesman said it could not discuss an internal matter.

Bradford West MP Marsha Singh said: "It is vitally important that people going through immigration procedures should go through all the right channels, or it can cause very many problems."

A Home Office spokesman said it could not comment on the case but added: "We would expect people to give correct information and if they hadn't, it would be dealt with at appeal."

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