Sacked Oxfam worker rehired months later
Inquiry is launched into vetting of consultant while former director in Haiti denies hiring prostitutes
Oxfam has admitted it rehired an aid worker sacked over the prostitutes scandal in Haiti. Gurpreet Singh was dismissed for misconduct in 2011 but just months later was employed by the charity as a consultant in Ethiopia. Oxfam is now investigating his conduct in Africa. It came as Roland van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam’s director in Haiti, yesterday broke his silence to insist that he had never hired prostitutes but was nevertheless “deeply ashamed” of his “mistakes”.
OXFAM has admitted that it rehired an aid worker it had sacked amid claims of using prostitutes in Haiti.
Gurpreet Singh was dismissed for sexual misconduct in 2011 but just months later was employed by the charity as a consultant in Ethiopia.
Oxfam is now investigating his conduct in Africa and said there was a need for a “sector-wide approach to the vetting and recruitment”.
A spokesman said: “Hiring Mr Singh, even in an emergency as a short-term consultant, was a serious error and should never have happened.”
Following allegations that he and three other men paid for sex with prostitutes – some of whom were alleged to be under-age – the men were sacked.
Three others, including Roland van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam’s director in Haiti, were allowed to leave before the investigation concluded. Mr van Hauwermeiren, 68, yesterday broke his silence to insist that he had never slept with prostitutes.
In a four-page open letter, he said that since going to the earthquake-hit Caribbean country in June 2010 for Oxfam, the only party he ever hosted was a “reception” for staff and donors.
However, he admitted he was “deeply ashamed” of his “mistakes”, adding that he was a “man of flesh and blood” and “no saint”, which had led to him having sex with a local “respecta- ble” adult female.
He said he told Oxfam investigators: “I have been intimate three times in my house with a respectable adult lady – not a victim of the earthquake, not a prostitute – whom I had met in Haiti when I was helping her younger sister and very young mum with diapers and powdered milk.”
He added: “I have never given them money. I have never visited a brothel, a nightclub or a bar in Haiti.”
In 2011 in Haiti, he said he warned a male colleague over “problematic sexual behaviour” towards a female aid worker, but that an investigation found it was “her word against his”.
He went on: “But I have fed rumours that I was also implicated in these scandals. As a director I should have led by example and I have compromised myself and the organisation.”
He added the allegations were “ruining” him and his family, and that his children had disowned him.
He rejected as “nonsense” claims that he and his staff hired prostitutes in Chad during the civil war in 2006. Anyone using prostitutes in the “puritan Muslim country” would end up with his “throat slit on the street the next day”, he added.
Mr van Hauwermeiren admitted he was fired from his job at the emergency relief charity Merlin after dancing and flirting with prostitutes in Liberia in 2004. He insisted that although he had no contact with the prostitutes he accepted that his bosses were right to fire him. He urged people to continue supporting Oxfam, stressing that it was a “professional and honest humanitarian organisation” which did not deserve to have its reputation destroyed.
Last night, he told Flemish TV: “Less professional journalists have described Oxfam as a tool to organise a sexual orgy through money from honest citizens. That is absolutely not true.”
Meanwhile, Penny Mourdant, the International Development Secretary, met Lynne Owens, director general of the National Crime Agency, to discuss the growing scandal.
Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, and Caroline Thomson, trustees chairman, are to be questioned by MPS next week.