Egypt Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time)

Shortly, at 12am, time will be advanced 1 hour to 1am to start the Summer Daylight Saving Time here in Egypt. Instead of being GMT +2, it will be GMT+3 untill the end of April.

Daylight Saving Time takes effect on the last thursday of April and ends on the last thursday of September. This has been the case for the last 10 years. Before that, it was between the first of May and the first of October. This was so dumb because most of the time, the change of time took place during the week, so e Egypt lazy employees find it difficult to wake up on time and adapt on the change fastly. Anyways, it was a wise decision to be praised by Atef Sedky's government.

However, there is an issue that is coming up with the change of time back to Standard time (Winter time as its called in Egypt) which is advancing of the holy month Ramadan. Due to the difference of Gregorian and hijri calendars which is 11 days and 12 days in leap years, almost every 33 years, hijri calendar gets closer by one year to the Gregorian. That's why it may be possible to witness muslims feasts (Eids) in the same year like this year, the Wa2fa of the Adha Eid will take place on December 31st and it took place on January 11th as well earlier this year.

The summer time should end on Thursday, September 29th 2006, however, Ramadan starts on approximately September 23rd. This means that there will be two different times for fasting in Ramadan, one that lasts from 23-28 of September with Fajr and Maghreb times (5.30am till6.50pm) and from 28 Sept - 21 Oct with fasting times from (4.30am till 5.30pm). Members of parliaments raised doubts about that last year but not this. The governmnet announced that the summer time would end on the first day of Ramadan. Now we are back to the first problem. Time will be changed on a Saturday or a Sunday depending on the start of Ramadan. This will cause the same problems that happened 10 years ago when time is changed in the middle of the week and that people can't adapt to it. Now it will be Ramadan, when the stupid people start blaming every single type of shit on Ramadan (including memebers of my family). No people would go to work then.

What happens the 3 years later in 2009 when Ramadan starts on around August 20th and ends before the end of summer time which is the last thursday in September? Will summer time be resumed for a week? What about the following years? Will summer time be resumed for one month and then go back to winter time? What the hell is going on? Why not leave the summer time till its normal ending date? Why not suspend this summer time for good instead of messing with time? I am waiting for another joke by the dumb government of Egypt in 2009.

How was the government handling this situation 33 years and 66 years ago? Back then I think summer saving time was not taking place. It has been decreed and cancelled many times since the 1950s and the last time i came back was in 1980s.

It is simple. Either keep it or cancel it. Also cancelling fasting in Ramadan would be another suggestion as it would solve the government this coming hastle.