Some early-rising Egyptians woke up on Friday to find their mobile phone's clocks shifted one hour early despite the cabinet's decision last week to abolish daylight savings time (DST) once and for all.
Those who noticed the time changed in their electronic devices took to social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook to express their confusion or alert others unaware of their phone’s automatic time change.
As Friday is the start of the Egyptian weekend, thus those sleeping-in are likely not to immediately notice the time change.
First implemented in the country in 1988, the system was introduced as a power-saving measure prolonging daylight hours.
It was abolished in April 2011 after the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, with the government arguing at the time that the practice was ineffective at curbing power usage.
The system was temporarily revived in May 2014 in order to ease consumption after the country saw rolling power blackouts.
Egypt is normally two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — meaning it was three hours ahead when daylight savings time was applied.
Last week, the chairman of EgyptAir said the flag carrier could lose up to $2 million if parliament votes for cancelling daylight saving time, yet stressed the airline "would deal flexibly" with any decision it reaches.
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