“Populist and harmful to the economy”. Zelensky is asked to veto the law on cancelling daylight saving time
18 July 2024 13:32
The cancellation of daylight saving time will increase the cost of lighting in the evening, while sunlight in the morning will be wasted. This is the opinion of Oleksandr Nakonechnyi, President of the Academy of Sciences of Higher Education, according to "Komersant Ukrainian"
The academician notes that from now on, at the end of June, it will dawn at 3am in Kyiv and get dark at 8pm. This will lead to an increase in lighting costs in the evening in spring, summer and autumn, while sunlight will be wasted in the morning.
“With the adoption of the draft law No. 4201, Ukraine has departed from the practice of calculating time commonly used by the EU and other countries that support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression and adopted a variant typical of the totalitarian world. This decision is difficult to explain in terms of any political logic,”
– believes Oleksandr Nakonechnyi.
The next step that the authorities will have to take in the face of Bill No. 4201 is to introduce a flexible schedule for the start of the working day in different regions of the country, according to the Academy of Higher Education Sciences. This will completely offset the effect of time “stability” that the bill is supposed to provide. With this in mind, the Academy of Higher Education Sciences appealed to the President of Ukraine.
“The Academy of Higher Education of Ukraine calls on you, dear Volodymyr Oleksandrovych, to veto the purely populist, harmful to the economy and anti-European in nature draft law No. 4201, and to instruct the government to form a working group of scientists to develop proposals for improving the timekeeping system in Ukraine,”
– the scientist said.
Law on cancellation of daylight saving time
on 16 July, the Verkhovna Rada cancelled the change of time from winter to summer in Ukraine.
After the president signs the bill, the country will switch to winter time for the last time in autumn 2024. From 2025 onwards, there will be no more daylight saving time. Starting from 2025, Ukraine will use only “winter time”.
Timekeeping throughout Ukraine will be based on a “single” Kyiv time, the second time zone in the UTC 2 scale.
Prior to this decision, Ukraine used to live on Eastern European time and set its clocks twice a year: on the last Sunday of March, daylight saving time, and on the last Sunday of October, winter time.
The Verkhovna Rada tried to cancel the change of time, but MPs did not support the bill as a whole.
Draft law No. 4201 has been under consideration in parliament since 2020.
In particular, on 3 March 2021, the Verkhovna Rada passed the draft law “On Timekeeping in Ukraine” in the first reading, but only 212 MPs voted for it on 19 March. After that, the draft law on cancelling daylight saving time was sent back for revision.
Author: Anastasia Fedor.
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