Staff ‘lounged at hotel with young girls’

OXFAM staff sent to provide typhoon relief spent weeks at a luxury hotel cavorting with girls who appeared to be underage, a British pilot has claimed.

The aid workers had been sent to the Philippines after Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, but Chris Jacobs said they spent most of their time by the hotel pool with young girls.

He claimed to have even phoned Oxfam to complain about their behaviour – but said he was ignored. The commercial airline pilot was at the five-star Marco Polo hotel on Cebu Island with wife Jo because their home on nearby Bantayan had no power.

The 44-year-old said he saw 20 charity officials at the hotel, where rooms cost up to £138 a night. ‘[The workers] had brand new Oxfam-branded vehicles in the car park but didn’t seem to travel to the areas that were badly hit,’ Mr Jacobs told the London Evening Standard.

‘It was not in the area where the typhoon caused the worst damage and some of these Oxfam officials seemed to spend all their time by the pool with young local women. It was the older men who were the problem. A number of guests became upset because the girls looked 14 or 15.’

Oxfam said it had no record of the allegations at the time but it was now investigating after Mr Jacobs called the charity this week. No Oxfam staff had stayed at the hotel in question but they may have visited as they stayed nearby, the spokesman said.