Impact of government’s motorcycle subsidy on job performance of agriculture extension officers in Southern province in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Agricultural Extension is an ongoing, non-formal educational process that takes place over a period of time to transfer knowledge to rural farmers. In Sri Lanka, the ratio of farmers to extension officers is 800:1, and therefore, one extension officer has to extensively work with a larger group of farmers with a limited resource capacity. Considering these facts, the Sri Lankan government decided to provide motorcycle subsidy under National Budget Circular 2/2014 to increase the job performance and well-being of the Agricultural Inspectors. Even though the foresaid objective of this subsidy scheme is to improve the performances, there were no follow-up monitoring and evaluation system for this scheme. Therefore, this research is aimed at evaluating the impact of the government’s motorcycle subsidy on job performance and well-being of Agricultural Inspectors in the southern province of Sri Lanka. The sample of 48 Agricultural Inspectors was randomly selected from 70 Agricultural Inspectors in the Galle district. Descriptive and inferential statistics tests