Daylight savings time returning to Egypt on 7 July

– from AhramOnline.com –

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.