Another consideration that the government faces a general election in early 2019 and any indecisiveness on IL&FS would have eroded the political capital of the government. "The local Ethiopian workers shut the gates and the local policeman support them," Satinder Pal Singh Khokher, who works for the Aditya Birla Group in Gujarat according to LinkedIn, said in an interview. IL&FS had defaulted on paying both taxes and local employee pensions for nine months, the letter said. He said the Authority would not take any action to help the detained employees before local staff were paid.Ethiopian Roads Authority director general Habtamu Tegegne didn’t immediately respond to two calls to his office phone. The Spanish ambassador to Ethiopia, Borja Montesino Martínez del Cerro, didn’t immediately respond to two emails seeking comment.

Source: Ethiopian News November 30, 2018 06:45 UTC