Daylight savings time in Egypt postponed to 7 July

Ahram Online , Thursday 28 Apr 2016

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File Photo: Egyptians shield themselves from the sun in Downtown Cairo, Egypt, June 3, 2014 (Photo: Mustafa Omira)

The Egyptian cabinet announced on Thursday that daylight savings time will return to Egypt starting 7 July until the end of October.

Daylight savings time, which had for years seen clocks put forward one hour in the summer, was canceled last April in a decision by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

The system was scrapped following a public poll that showed a majority did not support applying daylight savings time in Egypt.

First implemented in the country in 1988, the system was introduced as a power-saving measure prolonging daylight hours.

It was abolished in April 2011 after the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, with the government arguing at the time that the practice was ineffective at curbing power usage.

The system was temporarily revived in May 2014 in order to ease consumption after the country saw rolling power blackouts.

In the summer of that year, Egypt changed the clock four times, first applying daylight savings time, and then suspending it during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to shorten the daily dawn-to-dusk fast.

Egypt is normally two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — meaning it was three hours ahead when daylight saving time was applied.

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Phil McCarroll

29-04-2016 05:29pm

Daylight Saving & Solar Alleviate Peak Demand

Daylight Saving provides a daily Earth Hour. It's smarter to use Daylight Saving with solar panels to alleviate the peak demand (curbs the need for governments to build more costly & dirty power stations for any growing peak demand). Daylight is free and clean, so it's best not to waste it away with 4:30AM sunrises that will have the noisy birds rudely waking you up as they do here in Queensland, Australia.

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Farid

29-04-2016 12:33pm

Why?

Most of countries worldwide debating to cancel daylight saving and Egypt already did it. Keep it the way it is now

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Mai Sayed

29-04-2016 09:24am

Why

I think it is useless, and it wastes time.

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expat

28-04-2016 10:29pm

the ONLY positive thing about the revolution 2011

was the logic aboundening of this mad saving time in a country with max 2 hours difference between winter and summer sun time,it simply doesnt make ANY sense to switch times,especially,when this is lifted because of rhamadan again and being re-implemented.... stop this nonsense,please

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ayman

28-04-2016 08:41pm

Chaotic

The public do not want it, as stated in the article, since it needlessly keeps messing up their workday hours and it was cancelled by the president. Who keeps insisting on bringing it back?

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Steve

29-04-2016 10:57pm

That's exactly what I was thinking

The public doesn't want it! Nor does this president! Any yet, it still comes back somehow! Like this issue and many other issues facing Egypt and Egyptians, it doesn't matter what Egyptians think anymore. I think of it as a game being played. One day/year they toss it altogether. The next day/year they bring it back. No normalization. No questions asked.

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