Islamabad: It's like moving from "Musharraf time" to "Zardari time", says a retired government official as Pakistan adopts Daylight Saving Time (DST) on June 1 and advances the clock by an hour.

According to a government notification, the country will advance its time on the first day of the next month and will be six hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) instead of the present five hours.

DST is being introduced to reduce power consumption and maximise the use of daylight. During DST, the sun appears to rise one hour later in the morning, and sets an hour later in the evening, seeming to stretch the day longer.

The experiment with DST is not happening for the first time, as the military government of President Pervez Musharraf tried the same in 2002.

However, the scheme was not repeated the next year as millions of illiterate people, and those living in the rural areas, simply refused to advance their watches.

Even in the cities, the move led to many hilarious and confusing situations with some organisations and institutions following the DST system but anti-Musharraf groups still going by the "old time".