The Municipal Finance
Management Internship Programme (MFMIP) was introduced to assist
municipalities to increase their capacity to implement the municipal finance
reforms embodied in the MFMA. The MFMIP seeks to assist municipalities to
develop the knowledge and skills of the interns employed under this
programme in areas such as strategic planning and management, municipal
budgeting and finance management. It is an organised professional training
and work experience programme with the goal of providing high quality
training and practical exposure in all aspects of municipal finance
management. The MFMIP is designed to provide interns (who are graduates in
the fields of Accounting, Economics and Finance) with a logical training
sequence founded on the knowledge competencies they acquired as graduates.
It is envisaged that through workplace rotation, there will be interaction
and mentoring by CFOs, MMs, international advisors and other experienced
officials.
The goal of the programme is for each municipality to appoint a minimum of 2
interns (graduates from the above fields of study) over a period of no less
than 24 months. Municipalities are encouraged to offer more graduates this
opportunity and not be limited only to 2 interns if they have the resources
and means to broaden the programme.
Once these interns have completed their workplace skills programme, the
municipality should continue with the programme by offering others similar
opportunities. Those interns that have completed the programme must be given
an opportunity to gain full employment at the municipality or if no
positions are available then approaches should be made to the neighbouring
municipality to utilise such skills.
At the end of September 2007, 474 interns have been appointed in 222
municipalities and we would like to grow this to over three times the size
of the current programme. All 283 municipalities must now move towards
increasing these numbers to meet the goal of the programme.
Financial assistance has also been provided to municipalities in the form of
the Finance Management Grant (FMG) to assist in the roll-out and management
of the above programme. The primary objective of the grant is the building
of capacity in finance management across all municipalities.