Egypt cancels daylight saving time system

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi issued a decree to officially abandon summer daylight saving time, due to major Egyptian people's opposition, local media reported on Friday.

The decision came three days after the cabinet approved scrapping the system this year, following a public poll that showed major Egyptian people did not support applying daylight saving time, Al-Ahram online official news website said.

Egypt, which is normally two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time and Greenwich Mean Time, has applied the daylight saving time for years, putting clocks one hour forward in the summer.

In 1988, daylight saving time was first introduced in Egypt as a power-saving measure prolonging daylight hours.

However, the government stopped implementing the system in April 2011 after the uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak.

While, in May 2014, the government resumed using the system in order to ease rolling power blackouts. Endit