Six months after the new Government dumped Samoa’s daylight savings time (D.S.T.) policy, the transition has not gone exactly according to plan for local residents.

If D.S.T. was still in effect in Samoa, it would have begun at 3am Sunday 26 September 2021 and ended 4am Sunday 3 April 2022.

However, the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (F.A.S.T.) Administration in September last year announced that the Cabinet had decided to abandon the 11-year-old policy and the country will switch back to observing West Samoa Time (W.S.T.) all year.

But not all smart phones and electronic devices made the transition either as people woke up on Sunday morning to find that their clocks were an hour behind – in line with the now abandoned D.S.T. 

Only iPhone users and those who manually switched their phones’ timezone to Tonga’s – based on advice last year from the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology – were not affected when the D.S.T. switch occurred at 4am Sunday.

When the Human Rights Protection Party (H.R.P.P.) Government introduced the D.S.T. to Samoa over a decade ago, it enacted legislation (Daylight Saving Act 2009) which gave powers to the Ministry of Commerce Industry and Labour (M.C.I.L.) to oversee the implementation of the D.S.T.

It was the M.C.I.L. that advised the public in September last year of the Cabinet’s decision on 15 September 2021 to abandon Samoa’s D.S.T.

The Minister for Commerce Industry and Labour, Leatinu'u Wayne So'oialo, was contacted by the Samoa Observer on Sunday to comment on the teething problems of W.S.T. However, Leatinu'u referred all questions to his Ministry’s C.E.O. Pulotu Lyndon Chu Ling, as he was in quarantine after arriving from New Zealand and "still on medical leave." Pulotu could not be reached by this newspaper for a comment as of press time. 

The new Government’s scrapping of the policy in September last year did not go down well with the principal architect of the D.S.T. and former prime minister and H.R.P.P. leader, Tuilaepa Dr. Sa'ilele Malielegaoi.

“It sure looks to me like these people continuously like to espouse the rule of law but they don’t want to obey the law,” Tuilaepa said in a statement at that time. 

“Last week [Prime Minister] Fiame [Naomi Mata’afa] and her Cabinet decided to do away with daylight saving which caused havoc amongst the population with most computers and mobile phones automatically falling into line with current international practice.”