pushing for Daylight Saving Time in the Cayman Islands have finally gotten the
attention of Government.
Premier McKeeva Bush said Friday that he would put together
a group of people to study the pros and cons of implementing Daylight Saving
Time in our country.
He did not say whether he supports such a move or not.
Essentially Daylight Saving Time would cause us to advance
our clocks one hour when the time change is made in the United States.
Right now the Cayman Islands runs on US Eastern Standard
Time. When Daylight Saving Time goes into play in the US, Cayman becomes one
hour behind the time on the East Coast. That means while financial houses in
New York are closed at 5pm, many of our financial services are still working
because it is only 4pm here.
Those pushing for the time change argue the change would put
our financial services in sync with firms in New York. But we would argue that
financial services here in Cayman already have plans and people on board to
deal with the time differences or we wouldn’t be one of the top financial
services centres in the world.
Daylight Saving Time would also mean longer port stays for
cruise tourists, which could be translated to more commerce in the downtown
area.
The time change has been lauded for years as a means to save
energy because there would be an extra hour of daylight, making it unnecessary
to turn on lights in homes.
A recent caycompass.com online poll was virtually split down
the middle with an almost equal number of people supporting time change or
leaving it as is.
There would be costs for Government and businesses if
Daylight Saving Time was adopted.
It is hoped that the committee dedicated to looking into the
time switch does a thorough job of studying the pros and cons.
There are many studies available on the subject.
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Your reasoning about saving CUC bills by not turning on lights as early is certainly off-set by keeping the a/c running longer in the evening when it is the hottest. We notice a huge cooling effect in our home when the sun begins to set and that alone saves electricity. That is just common sense.
By the way, most people in the States are against it now and it keeps getting longer and longer – many states trying to go back to staying on the same time all year long.