State Duma launches work on bill to return winter time
MOSCOW. Feb 27 (Interfax) - The State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia's parliament, has started to work on a bill permitting a return to winter time in the country.
On Thursday, the Duma Council discussed this issue and forwarded the document to the chamber's committees and factions, as well as the president, the government, the Public Chamber and the country's region for consideration.
"The bill carries the signatures of 87 deputies. We have proposed including it on the agenda for the State Duma's spring session and debating it in the first reading in April," one of the authors of this bill and State Duma Healthcare Committee head, Sergei Kalashnikov, told Interfax.
Kalashnikov told Interfax earlier that this bill would offer a solution to the issue of returning to winter, astronomical, time.
The parliamentarian has said more than once that Russian regions are in different positions in relation to astronomical time. Russian regions that already live by astronomical time will not undergo any changes, but other regions will have to turn their clocks back one hour.
In some Russian regions, the gap between their actual time and astronomical time is two hours.
"This will no longer happen," he said.
Kalashnikov also noted the absence of arguments in favor of sticking to the old system after the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor published a report confirming the negative effect of year-round "summer time" in Russia.
A bill permitting a return to winter time was submitted to the State Duma on January 20. Its authors proposed enacting the document on October 26, 2014.
The transition to winter saving time was cancelled in Russia by the government on August 31, 2011.