Daylight saving scheme
It seems that there is a lot of confusion regarding the Day Light Saving Scheme poised to be implemented from the 19th of this month. Even the ministry was confused and thought of implementing it on a weekday, the 15th of June. At least that has been corrected and the timing will change on the eve preceding the weekend, i.e. the 19th of June. This gives an edge to adapt to the change in timings.
Some of the journalists seem to be totally in the dark regarding DST. Otherwise, why will they ask the state minister what will happen to the children who will have to go to school one hour earlier? The minister was also not properly briefed and he kept quiet. Once again when the ministry finally declared that the clocks would be moved forward from the 19th by 1 hour, some of the leading papers wrote that new office timings would now be from 8 to 4. Others said that Bangladesh may face problems with plane flights and international dealings. None of these are however true.
Office timings will remain from 9 to 5 unless the govt. revises office timings in addition to shifting the clock forward. That's the difference between shifting the clock and shifting the office timings. If you shift the clock, the routines don't change. If you slept at 11:00pm and got up at 7:00am, you will continue to do that. If your child went to school at 7:30am he will continue to go to school at 7:30. If your office ended at 5:00pm, it will end at that time. But when you come out of office at 5:00pm, the sun will be brighter. You will have more time to shop, go to parks for an evening walk and return home before the sun sets. If you had two hours before darkness fell, now you would have three hours. The female commuters will feel safer in the daylight and travel back home in sunlight.
Supposing you had a daughter in Denver, USA, and had to call her every Sunday night at 11:00pm. In the winter, you had to call her at 11:00am, our local time. Since the US moved forward in spring, if you called her now at 11:am, you would be disturbing her at midnight. But from the 19th, you would call her at 11:am to reach her at 11:pm. Similarly, Pakistan was always 1 hour behind us. But this year we have the same timings, as Pakistan adapted the DST. But from the19th, we will again move forward by 1 hour, thus maintaining the same gap. With our adaptation of DST, we will remove the gap with at least 70 countries that practice the DST policy.
Well, are there going to be any differences from this time change? Well, yes!! The international flights will be reaching an hour late and you have to go to the airport 1 hour later. No need to worry, because your itinerary will tell you in local timings when your plane departs. Domestic timings will not be affected unless they deliberately change. Another important change will take place. Fazr prayers will be at 5:30am instead of 4:30am, Maghrib will be at 7:50pm instead of 6:50pm. In fact, all prayer timings will move forward by an hour.
You don't have to change clocks at midnight on the 19th. Only official time keepers like radio and TV will do that. You change all clocks, watches and mobiles before you go to bed and everything falls into place the next day. In fact, most mobile sets have a DST icon in time menu. Just click that one and your mobile automatically adjusts to the new timing. If 70 countries can do it, we can also do it. Pakistan adapted it in the past but gave it up. They weighed the pros and cons and adapted it again from this year. Since the sun will set at 8:00pm and the shops are required by law to close at 8:00pm, hopefully the shops will not put on their lights before closing. This surely will save a few watts.
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