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Govt’s time change: Tigers not bothered
The LTTE, which did not change the clock in areas under its control when the rest of Sri Lanka resorted to daylight saving time in 1996, said yesterday the group would continue with the same time.

“We didn’t change the clock then. We don’t intend changing it now,” said Tiger media spokesman Daya Master. He said the LTTE chose to remain with the 5½ hours before GMT in the north and east at the time the government decided to push forward the clock, first by an hour and then reduce it to 30 minutes (6 hours ahead of GMT) when a major power crisis emerged.

Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s direction, the clock would be pushed back by 30 minutes on April 14 to the former time, a move that has been widely criticized as unwise. Sir Arthur C. Clarke has also described the plan to change the clock as inadvisable.

He said “If we put the clock back by half an hour as proposed, dusk will fall sooner -- and households will be consuming more electricity. Both the country’s generation costs and individual electricity bills could go up as a result.”
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