Faisalabad, Pakistan · UTC+5 ☆

Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city and the center of its textile industry, runs on Pakistan Standard Time, UTC+5, year-round. The IANA identifier Asia/Karachi covers the whole country. Pakistan tried daylight saving time in 2008, 2009, and again in 2011, each time advancing clocks by one hour in summer. The experiments were abandoned each time, largely because of disruption to industrial operations and the difficulty of coordinating with international trading partners who kept different DST schedules.

textile factories and the cost of clock changes

Faisalabad’s importance is textile. The city produces an enormous share of Pakistan’s cotton yarn, fabric, and garments, exported primarily to the EU and North America. The factory floor runs on shift schedules that begin before dawn and continue through the night. Changing the clock twice a year created genuine confusion in shift handoffs and delivery deadlines.

At 31 degrees north, Faisalabad has about 9.5 hours of daylight at the winter solstice and 14.5 hours in summer. The difference is meaningful, but Pakistan’s industrial and religious schedulers proved more disruptive to DST than DST was to daylight. The prayer times, recalculated after each clock change, created additional friction in a country where call to prayer times are published officially and followed widely.

Convert 9am Faisalabad time to London

Sources

• IANA Time Zone Database
• Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD)
• Zaidi, S. Akbar. Issues in Pakistan’s Economy: A Political Economy Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2005.