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DST change awaits cabinet decision

Clock won't go back by 1-hr from Oct 1

Staff Correspondent

The government is not putting back the clock by one hour from October 1, instead it continues the Daylight Saving Time (DST) measure till the cabinet makes a fresh decision.

The Daily Star Friday reported that the clock would go back an hour from October 1. But following the report, the power ministry yesterday said the clock will not be put back an hour till the cabinet reviews the DST measure and makes a fresh decision.

In June, the cabinet approved a proposal of the power ministry to put the clock an hour forward on June 18 as a way to conserve energy.

The original proposal was to keep the DST till September 30 and revert to GMT+6 on October 1. The DST was proposed to be implemented from April 1 next year again.

"However the cabinet only approved the decision to put the clock ahead by one hour. It had not given the decision to put the clock back to the traditional time from October," said a top power ministry source.

"We are expecting a decision in this regard after the prime minister returns home," the source said.

The DST measure has succeeded in reducing power demand of up to 200 megawatt during the peak hours between 7:00pm and 9:00pm during June and September.

PDB sources say that if the DST continues after October 1, it would not be able to reduce power demand as the sun presently sets more than an hour before it did in June. "Global practice shows that DST prevails for a certain period of time," said a PDB high official.

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The news of DST return on 1st Oct caused a major hike in Telco industries. Many had canceled employees leave as this would effect time sensitive real time activity.

We may feel that DST is a matter of switching our clock one hour ahead or back but in reality it involves a complected operations. For telco industries it means massive synchronization operation with all operators inside and out of country. For Airways it means scheduling of air traffic with all airlines. Many TV channels buy their broadcasting minutes from foreign satellite broadcasters.

It is a difficult job for the computer business to keep track with all these time changes issues and communicate the same into all laptops, desktops and servers throughout the world. We may not know but our computers are equipped with all time-zone information (including DST of other countries). For organizations like Microsoft, SUN Microsystems, Linux (Debian, RH, Fedora, Ubuntu,,,,), HP-UX each DST change for any country is a major work. At the end of the day we do not want to see that for a silly matter such as time change to cause death due to person who was on a life support system or loose huge sum of cash because during transaction time synchronization was not ready between two machines located at the other end of the world!!! Do we?

We live in a 21st century in a 3rd world country does not mean that our actions does not have any effect on anyone else. We must be reasonably sensitive at our daily life.

: Rohinga

It will be wise to put the clock permanently 1 hr. ahead as it is now. If not, December and January may be excluded.

: Mohammed Uddin

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