Daylight Saving Time Woes

Category: Articles/Opinion
Written by: Taimoor Masroor (on May 21, 2008 - 01:14 PM)

E-Mail Article to a Friend

From June 1^st 2008, we at Pakistan will have daylight saving timing. Which means that we would be switching our clocks to 11 PM on the mid-night of May 31^st. Which - and I just realized this - means that we will have two mid-nights on May 31^st. However, that is beside the point. Now I am a Karachiete so I am going to use the sun timings we have here. So we have the sunset at around 7.45 PM, there is enough daylight to begin with in this horrible summer.

Why do we need to save daylight when we have it till almost 8 in the evening? Yes, because of the power crisis. Due to a variety of reasons, we do not have enough electricity to run the country. Having longer days would mean fewer hours in which we would be required to use lights, bulbs etc. Thing is, given this heat, the hours during which we would not be using the electricity for our lightening needs, we would be sucking it dry through the air-conditioning. When five in the evening would actually be four in the afternoon, your AC would most definitely be turn on. Otherwise, you would be cursing KESC for the power cut.

As far as I see it, this is a useless measure. Imagine, sunset at nine in the fricking evening (read night) and the glaring Karachi sun till then. This also completely murders the life of the city, Karachi is called the “city of lights” for a reason; even though there are not enough lights anymore, the fact is that it is the city’s night which turns this concrete jungle into a living soul. With all the e-mail forwards there are not a lot among us who have not seen the aerial night shots of the city. In fact, one just needs to climb to a floor as high as tenth on any random apartment building and witness the splendor of Karachi’s night. It would not be the same with darkness coming in at nine.

The same goes for Lahore even, it’s the nights when the city gets going. At Islamabad this is going to be quite a bummer, no offence meant to any Islamabadis here but that city is out cold max 10 in the night. Speaking of nights and evenings, Karachi’s evening breeze is a bliss. Even that is out the window now. With the daylight checking out at nine I would be more concerned about the headache I will have because of all the brightness than enjoy anything post sunset has to offer. I still clearly remember the constant irritation when we had the idiotic daylight saving time a few years back.

However, we a desperate for electricity and are therefore trying to latch on to anything which seems to provide us with an option of battling the crisis. Ironically, building dams and power plants is not part of the anything. They are the long term solution and would not make a difference in context of the current year but these dams are an issue which has been under discussion for years now. Musharaff tried to hold consensus on the entire dam building issue a year or two back but nothing came out of it and eventually it had to bite the dust. Unless we are not willing to do anything about increasing the power generation capacity, idiosyncrasies like the daylight saving time is not going to do jack.

Share your thoughts by posting a Talk-Back: