Assessing Qualifications, Knowledge and Work Experience Of Sales Personnel on Safety Measures of Pesticides in Wad Medani, Sudan

The agricultural private sector in Sudan has emerged during the last two decades. It involves personnel that deliver extension services and considered as an alternative to the public extension. Many studies in Sudan have shown that farmers rely on retailers to buy pesticides and get information including use instructions without assessing the qualifications, knowledge and work experience of retailers on safety measures of pesticide .This study, therefore, intended to assess qualifications, knowledge and work experience of sales personnel on safety measures of pesticide in Wad Medani Central Agricultural Inputs Market, Gezira State, and Sudan that will help to avoid the adverse impacts of incorrect handling of pesticides on the environment and human health in the country. The study employed a field survey with questionnaire methodological procedure applied in guiding data collection. Descriptive statistics and the chi-square test were used to analyze and interpret the collected data. The results revealed that all sales personnel (100%) hold bachelor degree in different agricultural specializations, the majority of them (57%) are male, nearly (57%) of them have the period appointment from 1 -5 years, the majority of them (84%) display pesticide packages on shelves, store pesticides in stores, store pesticides on the ground and nearly (47%) of farmers obtained information from pesticide sellers in the market. The chi-square test showed a significant association between the education and period of appointment of the sales personnel and the majority of the selected safety measures of pesticides studied. It can be concluded that the agricultural private sector suffers from some obstacles that need solutions to be able to play its role more better, especially store specifications and training of sales personnel in both process and human how skills and technical skills which are necessary for their work.Therefore, we recommend that the stores should be built according to the required specifications, along with the training sales personnel during their service, in both process and human how skills and technical skills which are necessary for their work and further agricultural extension researches should be conducted in this research area.