The government must take the Malaysian Examination Board's (LPM) shortage of funds seriously as it has allegedly contributed to the delay in the announcement of the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) results, said PKR's Bukit Katil MP Shamsul Iskandar Md Akin.

Shamsul's statement comes after an allegedly leaked LPM circular stating that examination results will be released on March 16 instead of March 2 as the board had to repair faulty optical mark recognition (OMR) machines because there was insufficient funds to repair them.

The OMR machines are used to mark objective examination papers which are marked using pencils on an answer sheet.