Program Development Skills Towards Work Performance of Extension Agent During Movement Control Order (MCO) in Peninsular Malaysia

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), an infectious disease made Malaysia implemented a Movement Control Order (MCO) as a preventive measure towards the spread of the virus. Malaysia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in agriculture sector (2020) is 7.4 per cent, the percentage growth of this sector declined 2.2 per cent from 2.0 per cent in the previous year. The declination of the growth may be related with performance of extension agent during the pandemic due to 1st MCO regulations. In addition, the performance before MCO was high in 2019, hence, the aim of this study is to determine the skills and work performance of extension agents in their Program Development Skills (planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating - PIME). Specifically, this research intended to determine the level of PIME skills and their work performance, to evaluate the relationship of PIME skills with the work performance of extension agent and to determine the most PIME skills that contributes to the work performance of the extension agent during MCO in Peninsular Malaysia. This study was driven by the Iceberg Model and distributed using a random sampling technique. A total of 362 extension agents from Peninsular Malaysia were participated in this research. Based on the result, all independent variables (PIME skills) indicated a positive correlation towards work performance. The monitoring and evaluating are the skills that significant towards work performance, and the evaluating skill became the highest independent variable that contributes to the work performance of extension agent. About 71.2% variance of work performance is explained by PIME and the balance 28.8% is explained by the other factors. This study suggest that the extension agent should improve their planning and implementing skills to suite with pandemic situation, so that the program that has been planned earlier can be done even though the situation might be challenging © 2023 by the authors. Licensee ResearchersLinks Ltd, England, UK