South Sudan announces new time zone

The Republic of South Sudan through its Labor Ministry January 28 announced a major development that will see the nation adopt a different time zone.

"The National Ministry of Labor hereby informs all the Civil Service Institutions, Commissions, Diplomatic Missions, UN agencies, International and National Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the public at large that South Sudan has changed its official time from UTC+3 to UTC=2 which is based on South Sudan’s real location on the globe,” reads a letter from the Ministry.

According to the undersecretary Ministry of labor in the nine-year old North East-African nation, Ms Mary Wani Pitia, “The current time will be set back by one hour.”

The implication being; the current 1:00 am in the capital, Juba, will be set to 00:00 am- effective February 01 2021.

Colloquially referred to as the youngest nation on the African continental block, South Sudan has maintained its working hours as 8 am to 5 pm, like the case in countries Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi that form the East African bloc.

Michael Makuei Lueth, the government spokesperson, told The East African 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.

Ms Wani rallied stakeholders to ‘observe the new time.’