Sri Lanka introduces Summer Time at a day's notice

Peter Ilieve peter at aldie.co.uk
Tue Jul 30 13:14:15 UTC 1996


It was reported in today's (30 July) Times that the Sri Lankan
government has introduced daylight saving time. Two quotes:

`Moving the clocks forward an hour was announced the previous day
without debate, so most of the country turned up for work to find
they were an hour late. Sri Lanka is a nation of clock towers,
erected by a zealous government to ensure punctuality. But most
clocks still show the old time, people still find their trains
have left an hour early, the shops stay open an hour too late
and it no longer gets dark on time.'

`The clocks were changed for the first time in the country's
history because poor rainfall has disrupted hydroelectric power
stations and created an acute power shortage. A few months ago
power was being shut off for eight hours a day.'

[The cost of fighting a war against the Tamil Tigers for the last
13 years can't have helped power supplies much either.]

This has, not surprisingly, caused chaos and confusion, not least
among astologers and Buddhist priests organising the Perehara
festival in Kandy. The report doesn't give any dates or times
but it does say `And today, for the tenth consecutive night,
Sri Lanka's Buddhist pageant, Perehara, will begin an hour late'
so a guess at the start date would be 21 July.

The Times is on the Internet (and has been since 1 Jan 96) so
you can see the full report by starting at http://www.the-times.co.uk.
In theory you need to register first but going straight to:
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/96/07/30/timfgnafr01001.html?100nnnn
where nnnn is any 4 digit number should get you there, by pretending to
be whoever got that number when they registered. :-)


		Peter Ilieve		peter at aldie.co.uk




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