Ramadan Time Change in Morocco - at a cost of 260 Million Dirhams!

Daylight saving to stop ... and then start again

The wonderfully named "Ministry of Public Modernisation" in Morocco has just confirmed what everyone suspected - Ramadan can not handle daylight saving. Yes, once again during the month of Ramadan Morocco returns to GMT. The Ministry announced today that from from July 7 to August 10 the time will shift back an hour.

This is despite advice that the transition to summer time would have saved 90 megawatts per day and about 262 million dirhams, or consumption of a city like Meknes .

So, from July 7, make a note to turn you clocks and watches back 60 minutes from 3 am. (Just to be clear, 3 am will become 2am!).

It is also important to check your airline flights as several times in the past people have missed flights because either they or the airline was not up to speed on the proclamations from the Ministry of Modernisation.

This strange avoidance of daylight saving during Ramadan was measure, introduced in Morocco in June 2008, after two failed attempts in 1985 and 1989. Daylight saving aims to make energy savings and reduce the time difference between Morocco and its economic partners, mainly European - but somehow the experts have failed to find a way of working within Ramadan! Hopefully someone will figure it out.

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