Pakistan experimented with DST in 2002, going from UTC+05:00 to UTC+06:00 on the first Sunday in April at 00:00 to the first Sunday in October at 00:00. Pakistan implemented DST again from June 1, 2008 to August 31, 2008, to meet the annual shortfall of 4 gigawatts of electricity instead of enforcing daily power cuts in households and factories.[1] This had the counterintuitive effect of making Pakistan half an hour ahead of India, though Pakistan is generally located west of India. The government later extended the schedule to October 31, which also included the holy month of Ramadan, which began in early September. Pakistan used DST again in 2009 then abandoned the practice; as a result, Pakistan no longer uses DST.
Last year, the government had turned the clocks ahead on June 1 to avail an extra hour of daylight for conserving energy to contain the power shortfall.
In 2002, the government cabinet decided that "in order to make maximum use of daylight and to save energy", they would adopt the daylight saving time (DST) system. This required the country to advance the time by one hour on the night between the first Saturday and Sunday of April, and revert to the original position on the first Sunday in October of 2002 at 00:00.[2]
The Government of Pakistan decided to use DST again from June 1, 2008 to October 31, 2008[3]. DST was originally meant to end on August 31, 2008[4] but the end date was changed by the Government to be October 31, 2008[4].
In 2009, the clocks across the country were advanced by one hour on April 15, 2009. A statement by the Ministry of Interior said the Pakistan Time (PKT) was advanced by one hour to make full use of daylight. It said the clocks would be reversed again by an hour on October 31, 2009[5].
|
|||||||||||