An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa scheme has been awarded nearly £30,000 in a landmark case, because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year.

An employment tribunal ordered the care company Swan Care Solutions Ltd to pay Shabin Shaji wages for the work he was “ready, able and willing to do”.

Believing there was a “major shortage” of healthcare workers in the UK, Shaji emigrated from Kerala to Stafford, England, bought a car for the job and undertook online training in 2023.

He told the tribunal that before arriving in the UK, he had sought advice from a YouTube influencer on securing work in the UK.

She connected him with agents whom he paid £17,000, before he was interviewed for a role at Swan Care Solutions on WhatsApp, the tribunal heard.

Shaji was then given a certificate of sponsorship, entitling him to live and work in the UK with Swan Care Solutions as his Home Office-approved sponsoring employer.

But the computer science graduate, who had previously worked in healthcare in India, ended up in destitution after his Staffordshire-based employer did not give him any shifts, despite his repeated pleas.

His sponsored visa prevented him from working for anyone else for more than 20 hours a week. He eventually managed to secure sponsorship from another employer in April 2024 – a year after his arrival in the UK – but he later returned to India in ill health.

The 33-year-old won his pay claim after seeking help from the employment justice charity Work Rights Centre, which said “thousands of people” had paid money to recruiters, “only to arrive in the UK to be ghosted”.

Dora-Olivia Vicol, the charity’s chief executive, added: “We’ve seen case after case of migrant care workers sold a dream in Britain, leaving their careers and families behind, only to find destitution and abandonment by their employer and the state.

“The skilled worker visa must be entirely reformed to make it easier to change employers when rights or contracts are breached.”

The tribunal heard that Swan Care Solutions’ staff suggested Shaji take cash-in-hand jobs and use a food bank when he said he was struggling, telling him they would be in touch when it was his “turn”.

At a hearing in May the company was ordered to pay £8,700 in costs – on top of the £28,843.54 it was ordered to pay him in wages and holiday pay, plus remedy for failure to provide him with a written contract and non-compliance with grievance procedures.

At a hearing in Birmingham earlier this year, the employment judge Kate Edmonds said: “The claimant had done what needed to be done to start work … He was now in the country, with the right permissions, and living in the right location. However, the respondent did not provide him with work, nor did they pay him.

“What in effect the respondent was doing, was treating the claimant as a zero-hours worker … The problem, of course, was that the claimant was not a zero-hours worker.

“The respondent withheld work from him … There was therefore an unauthorised deduction from his wages.”

Shaji said: “I was broke and had to rely on charity. I drank tap water and bought bread close to its expiration date to survive [and] looked around local shops in Stafford for free bananas and bread for those who were struggling.

“I attended church and on Sundays after worship, the good people who attend the worship shared with me some snacks with tea, for which I am very grateful.”

He added: “I thought it would be a great opportunity, but when I came to the UK I found immigrants and British people struggling. I was in a terrible situation, feeling like no one in authority cared if I lived or died.”

He told the hearing that Swan Care Solutions’ actions had “serious long-term detrimental effects on my personal and family finances”.

Judge Edmonds said while it was “not entirely clear” how Shaji initially came to be in contact with Swan Care Solutions, it was clear he “was in touch with individuals with whom he appears to have transferred some money”.

The judge added that Swan Care Solutions’ licence to issue certificates of sponsorship had been “ultimately revoked” in 2024, in part because it did not pay workers until training had been completed.

Swan Care Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.