[tz] Ecuador DST in 1992/93

Alois Treindl alois at astro.ch
Thu Dec 15 14:45:27 UTC 2016


A client born in Ecuador wrote to me:

"I need a little help with something plus I don't know who else can help 
me besides Astro! When I was born, the President of Ecuador changed the 
time zone (one hour ahead) from Nov/28/1992 to Feb/05/1993 because of 
problems with energy and there were a lot of power cuts across the 
country. "

I checked the tzdata/southamerica file which holds for Ecuador:

# Ecuador
#
# Milne says the Central and South American Telegraph Company used -5:24:15.
#
# From Paul Eggert (2007-03-04):
# Apparently Ecuador had a failed experiment with DST in 1992.
# <http://midena.gov.ec/content/view/1261/208/> (2007-02-27) and
# <http://www.hoy.com.ec/NoticiaNue.asp?row_id=249856> (2006-11-06) both
# talk about "hora Sixto".  Leave this alone for now, as we have no data.
#
# Zone  NAME            GMTOFF  RULES   FORMAT  [UNTIL]
Zone America/Guayaquil  -5:19:20 -      LMT     1890
                         -5:14:00 -      QMT     1931 # Quito Mean Time
                         -5:00   -       ECT     # Ecuador Time


The two links in the comment to not work. I search the web and came up 
with this link:
http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/hora-sixto-1993.html

which says:
Al inicio de su mandato, el Gobierno Nacional, mediante Decreto 
Presidencial no. 285, obligó que todos los ecuatorianos adelantaran una 
hora en sus relojes para “ aprovechar la luz solar” y disminuir el 
consumo de energía. Fue la llamada ‘hora de Sixto’, que se aplicó desde 
el 28 de noviembre de 1992 hasta el 5 de febrero de 1993. Incluso, los 
estudiantes de todos los niveles educativos estuvieron obligados a 
iniciar clases a las 06:00 y terminar antes del mediodía.

Google translation:
At the beginning of his term, the National Government, through 
Presidential Decree no. 285, forced all Ecuadorians to advance an hour 
in their watches to "take advantage of sunlight" and reduce energy 
consumption. It was the so-called 'Sixtus hour', which was applied from 
November 28, 1992 until February 5, 1993. Even students of all 
educational levels were forced to start classes at 06:00 and finish 
before midday.

There should probably be a rule:
Rule    ECU    1992    only    -       Nov     28      0:00    1:00    S
Rule    ECU    1993    only    -       Feb      5      0:00    0       -

and the last lines of the existing entry should refer to this rule.

Whether the law applied also to Galapagos, I do not know.






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