Pretoria - Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced on Thursday that a rural safety plan will be rolled out next month.
Mthethwa said the rural plan will focus on education and awareness aimed at the farming community and police.
It will also focus on compliance with laws, enhancing the police's intelligence capacity against abuse or lawlessness as well as mobilisation of various stakeholders against any form of crime.
"What we derived from today's engagement with Food and Allied Workers Union (FAMWU) is commitment to work with government and other stakeholders to fight crime.
"From the farming environment you often find two diametrically differing views but through this plan, we remain confident that will win this war on crime. We are therefore extremely happy that FAMWU is now on board," Mthethwa said.
FAMWU general secretary Katishi Masemola said in order to fight crime on farms, farm workers and farmers needed to work together.
He said there are about 3 million farm dwellers of which about 450 000 are permanently employed at various farms nationally.
"Bad treatment of farm workers goes beyond labour or industrial issues which government must look at. We would like to see a more stringent implementation and harsher punishment of these crimes.
"We also do recognise that a lot of good work has been done by police in some cases, particularly in the North West province, where we have witnessed the convictions of perpetrators of these crimes," he said.
Mthethwa said government could not fight crime on farms alone, but needed members of society to help in efforts to fight crime and corruption
