A large number of Indians employed with various companies in war-torn Ukraine, who have been forced to return home, now find themselves battling a crisis of survival.

Many of them, including day wage earners from Bengal, are now trapped in debt and out of ideas on how to repay loans they had taken from moneylenders at high interest to pay the agencies that got them the Ukraine-based jobs.

What’s worse, most of these workers have gone virtually bankrupt paying exorbitant car fares to get from Ukraine to its western neighbours, for boarding India-bound aircraft.

Many of them now expect the Narendra Modi government at the Centre to come forward to help with a bailout package of some sort.

Ukraine has been a preferred destination apparently, not only for medical students but also wage earners because of its low cost of living despite it being part of mainland Europe. Sources in employment agencies said although the wages are comparatively lower than the more prosperous nations of western Europe, Ukraine fascinates job-seekers from not only South Asia but also Southeast Asia and the Far East. Indians usually cough up between Rs 4 to 7 lakh to agencies to find jobs there.

Prior to the outbreak of war, around 4,000 Indians were in Ukrainian cities, working for various private companies. Although exact figures are not available at the moment, a substantial number of them are from Bengal, said sources in the agencies.

A number of such workers, who returned home in Nadia and North 24-Parganas via Poland, had difficulty holding back tears while talking to this newspaper, mainly on account of the financial uncertainty they have now been subjected to.

Some of them have already made contact with overseas job agencies based in Calcutta and Mumbai, looking for alternatives. However, they said none could offer an immediate solution as demand for workers abroad during the pandemic is “subdued”.

Amit Kumar Biswas, 36, a resident of Gobar Char in Nadia’s Santipur, who worked with a courier company in Kyiv, said: “I don’t know what to do next. I have no money left.”

“The small sum I saved from my wages in Ukraine over the past few months went on the car fares. I don’t know how to repay the Rs 5.5 lakh I borrowed to pay the job agency,” he said, adding he had a family of five to feed. Biswas had gone to Ukraine in September 2021.

Suman Adhikari, 30, also from Santipur and employed as a delivery agent with an e-commerce company in Ukraine, virtually echoed Biswas.

“I previously worked in the Gulf, but went last year to Ukraine seeking a better future. I paid Rs 5 lakh to an agent, obviously by taking a loan. The war has changed everything,” he said.

“There is little possibility of returning to Ukraine to rejoin the same job, as nobody knows when the situation would be normal again. But I have to return what I borrowed…. Whatever little I had saved went in car fares, as we needed to hire cars twice to reach the Poland border,” he added.

Both Biswas and Adhikari had to rent cars to reach Lviv first, around 500 km from Kyiv, paying around Rs 75,000 each. Then they had to rent another car to reach the Polish border from Lviv, at least a 100km away, paying another Rs 15,000 more.

An agent of an employment company based out of Calcutta said: “The job market has been in a crisis because of the pandemic. The war suddenly caused drastic worsening. Many Indians who worked in Ukraine contacted us already. We have nothing on offer.”

But even if they were available, people like Biswas have no idea how to pay agents to get re-employed.

“The focus, sadly, has solely been on students from India stranded in the Ukraine. Our lot, in many ways, is far worse,” said one of the workers.

On a day Prime Minister Modi issued a statement on his government’s initiatives for the evacuation of Indians from Ukraine — and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tore into him — Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee again spoke on the students.

“I am very much worried about the lives of the Indian students held up in Ukraine. Life is very precious. Why is it taking so much time to bring them back? Why was not things done earlier?” asked Mamata in a tweet.

“I urge the Central Government that adequate number of flights be arranged immediately and all the students brought back as soon as possible,” she added, two days after she accused the Modi government of “too much politics and too little work”.

Mamata had then demanded answers why they waited till the actual onset of war before the evacuation of Indians, especially students, from Ukraine, when apparently they knew about the developments for months.