Administrative Constraints and Obstacles Faced by Agricultural Employees During the Performance of Their Duties in Agricultural Extension

• Khalid Salah Aldeen and Talal Saeed Hameed

  Author

This study aimed to identify the work stresses facing agricultural extension workers in Nineveh Governorate, to determine the correlational relationship between work stress and selected independent variables (age, gender, Academic achievement, years of service, and professional ambition), and to identify the most important proposals that contribute to reducing these stresses. The study population comprised workers at the Nineveh Agriculture Directorate and its branches, as well as the Agricultural Extension and Training Center, totaling 418 respondents. A simple random sample of 201 respondents was selected, from which 30 were excluded for reliability testing purposes, yielding a final sample of 197 respondents. The results revealed that the level of extension work stress was moderate with a tendency toward high, with the moderate category accounting for 55.34% of respondents and the high category for 35.02%. The findings also indicated significant correlations between work stress and each of the variables of age, education level, years of service, and professional ambition, while no significant correlation was found with gender. The most important proposals for alleviating work stress were: granting employees their allowances and promotions on time, reducing official working hours, and increasing material and moral support for workers. The proposal to provide a suitable work environment ranked last in terms of relative importance. The study findings underscore the importance of attending to agricultural extension workers by improving administrative, financial, and organizational aspects, given their direct impact on raising the efficiency of extension performance and achieving sustainable agricultural development goals.

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