South Sudan will switch to a new official time zone in February, the government has announced.
The country has been using Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) +3 and will switch to UTC +2 which is in her real location, according to the Cabinet.
“This means that the current time will be set back by one hour, the current 1:00am will be set to 00:00am, effective 1st February 2021,” said Mary Hillary Wani Pitia, the Undersecretary of the country’s Ministry of Labour.
In the statement seen by The EastAfrican on Friday, Ms Pitia said the usual working hours in a day will not be affected by the change.
Two weeks ago, South Sudan’s Cabinet approved the switch to a new time zone, a decision drew criticism on social media.
But the government couldn’t comment on it though it raised questions on why the country was focusing on petty things as opposed to majors.
Once the change becomes effective, South Sudan will no longer use East African Time, but will be in the same time zone as Egypt, Chad and Sudan.
Michael Makuei Lueth, the government spokesperson, told The EastAfrican on Friday that the country has not been using her real time according to Greenwich Meridian Time.
“The current time zone is not our actual time zone…We are in the 30th longitude and as such we are supposed to be two hours ahead of Greenwich Time zone. So, it was clear that the far East is 2.4 hours and the far west is 1.6 hours,” he said. (Theeastafrican)