Training municipalities to manage their finances will bring better service delivery, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said on Thursday.

"Enhanced municipal service delivery, along with cleaner municipal administration... is perhaps ambitious, but critically necessary," he said in Johannesburg.

"The expectations of communities have been raised by the state, but not always met."

He said financial management was a key skill in local government and was clearly not up to standard.

Only seven of 237 municipalities had obtained unqualified audits for the past financial year.

"We are looking for ambassadors and change agents to turn this around," the minister said.

The department launched a skills programme on Thursday to upgrade financial skills at municipalities.

Its aim was to introduce minimum standards of competence for supply chain and financial managers.

These minimum standards were in accordance with National Treasury regulations to be put into effect in January 2013.

National Treasury Accountant General Freeman Nomvalo said such rules and regulations were needed to fight unacceptable levels of fraud and corruption in the government.

"It is clear that the extent of fraud and corruption is threatening our democracy. We will be holding officials accountable to let them answer to what they have or have not done," he said.

He said a recent report by the Auditor General showed that municipalities were failing in their duties because of a lack of leadership and required skills.

"A survey revealed there is a correlation between investing in people skills and audit results... and dare I say, service delivery," Nomvalo said.

"If we create large numbers of qualified people, we will still retain a few who choose to work in rural municipalities because that's where they were born."

The R72-million programme is a partnership between the department, National Treasury, Deloitte and the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants.

The skills programme would seek to address a gap in financial middle management, using unit standards on levels five and six of the National Qualifications Framework.

A pilot programme had already trained 160 unemployed graduates and 150 municipal officials, deploying them to nine districts in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and North West.

A total of 710 unemployed graduates and 500 municipal officials would be trained and deployed when the programme rolled out nationally in January next year.