JOB SKILLS REQUIRED BY RETIREES IN CUCUMBER PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE FOR SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC AND EMOTIONAL SECURITY

Abstract

This study determined job skills required by retirees in Cucumber production and marketing for economic and emotional security in Enugu State, Nigeria. Three research questions were answered and three hypotheses tested for the study.The population for the study was 336 made up of 242 teachers of agriculture in senior secondary and 94 agricultural extension agent. The sample size for the study was 168 selected through proportionate simple random sampling technique. A 37-item questionnaire titled: Cucumber Production Job Skills Questionnaire (CPJSQ) used for data collection. The instrument was face validated by 3 experts. Cronbach Alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.82. The data collected were analyzed using weighted mean to answer the research questions while t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. It was found that retirees in Enugu State required 8 job skills in establishment, 12 job skills in management, 8 job skills in harvesting and 7 job skills in marketing of cucumber pods for economic and emotional security. Therefore, it was recommended that the identified skills should be packaged by skill acquisition centres for training retirees and other interest persons in Cucumber production, teachers of agricultural science should use the findings from this study to train students for self reliance in Cucumber production on graduation among others.