Criticism grows in Iran of govt. move to abolish daylight saving time law

Iran used to move clocks forward by one hour at midnight (2030 GMT), March 21, to observe Daylight Saving Time (DST).

After returning to standard time on 22 September 2022, the time in Iran stayed at UTC +3:30, as part of a government-proposed law adopted by the Parliament.

The Raisi administration, however, changed the start of working hours at the government offices to 6:00 a.m. as of Tuesday, saying the decision has been taken in line with “optimal management of energy consumption.”

In an article, Asr-e Iran news outlet highlighted the problems created by the decision for many in the country, especially the residents of Tehran and its suburbs.

“Instead of the clocks, they moved the employees backward,” it said sarcastically.

It wrote that the government “decided not to change the clock in Iran citing reasons such as the disturbance of the body’s biological clock, performance of religious acts such as pre-dawn prayer, or the fact that the clock change has no effect on energy consumption, and that many countries are stopping the clock change.”

“But what about those few hours of daylight? In this first half of the year, a city like Tehran is fully lit from 5:30 a.m., and this even reaches 4:30 a.m. in a city like Mashhad”, reads the article.

It said the change will cause sleep deprivation, among many other troubles.

“Now the city hosts employees who have not slept properly and use their personal cars to go to work from around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Such a situation has always led to unfortunate and fatal accidents,” Asr-e Iran warned.