Mexico City – Mexico is one step away from saying goodbye to daylight saving time after more than two decades. On Tuesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent the initiative to Congress which, if passed, will eliminate advancing the clock on the first Sunday in April and turning it back on the last Sunday in October.
During the morning conference on Tuesday, the president and members of his cabinet outlined the reasons for making that decision, both economically and socially, as well as in terms of health. The measure, they reported, does not represent substantial savings in energy and has negative effects on health.
The head of the Ministry of Energy (Sener), Rocío Nahle, reported that last June they conducted a survey on the subject and 71% of the participants said they disagree with changing the time on their clocks twice a year. “There has been a popular rejection since 1996, when this schedule was installed,” she asserted.
The Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer, explained that the time change affects the health of the population, because it causes sleep and memory problems, fatigue, depression, suicidal thoughts, lack of concentration. He also mentioned that there are studies that link time change with an increase in the incidence of heart attacks.
“The choice of observing daylight saving time is political and therefore can be changed. Studies show that the differences in time between the social clock and the biological clock challenge health, they even alter it, so if we want to improve our health we should not fight against our biological clock. It is advisable to return to our standard time, that is when the time of the sundial coincides with the time of the social clock… the clock of God,” Alcocer stressed.
López Obrador has been warning that he would send this reform to Congress since last month. “I am going to send the initiative so that there is no longer a time change, because I already have the studies and I have a survey,” the President declared in June.
If the proposal is approved, the last time that clocks will be changed in Mexico will be on October 30, 2022.
Sources: El País • La Jornada