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.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. 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 hold bachelors in different agricultural specializations, the majority of them are male, nearly 57% have the period appointment from 1 -5 years, the majority of them display pesticide packages on shelves , store pesticides in stores, store pesticides on the ground and nearly47 % 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.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.