Our archives show that in September 2018 an employee of Manchester Municipal Corporation predicted that within a year an appropriate monument would be at the site of the Kendal train crash of 1957 in which close to 200 people died.

Even for Jamaica — which is well known for tardiness — it is surely disgraceful that six years later nothing substantial has yet been done.

We feel for Ms Beverly East, who lost 14 relatives in the crash and authored a book connected to the Kendal crash, Reapers of the Soul. At the latest anniversary commemoration of the disaster at Kendal, Manchester, on September 1, she voiced extreme distress and frustration at the delay, and we daresay an inadequacy of respect for our own history.

Said Ms East: “I don’t want to see photo ops. I don’t want to hear promises. I don’t want to read a proclamation. I want to see a ground breaking… where the monument is going to be built. Even if the monument takes a period of time, I want to see action.”

For those unaware, on Sunday, September 1, 1957, hundreds of people from St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Kingston boarded a train and went to Montego Bay for an all-day excursion.

On their way back to Kingston, the overcrowded train crashed at Kendal, leaving close to 200 people dead and hundreds injured.

At the time, it was deemed the second worst rail disaster in the world.

Today, it’s difficult to understand how then national leaders failed to see the need for an appropriate memorial, back when the disaster was literally on every tongue.

That aside, we are at a stage when we should delay no longer. The many promises down the years must now be translated into action.

In 2018, at a memorial service at Kendal Missionary Church, another member of the East family — then 89-year-old Mrs Theresa East-Headley, who lost her mother, father, sister, uncle and his wife in the train crash — made the obvious point that she possibly would not return to the annual service, given her age.

Thankfully, she is still with us — though residing abroad.

Respect for those survivors and immediate relatives of victims such as Mrs East-Headley should be paramount today.

Also, it’s crystal clear that a proper monument, complemented by an access road and what Custos of Manchester Mr Garfield Green visualises as a memorial history park with suitable accessories will be a visitor attraction for students, history buffs, and relatives of crash victims at home and abroad.

The Ministry of Culture says close to $8 million has been committed to the monument. The proposed scope as imagined by Custos Green will probably mean a more costly project. But surely the Manchester business community will want to be a partner along with wider interested parties, including the Tourism Enhancement Fund and the Roman Catholic Church.

It could be argued that Governor General Sir Patrick Allen’s proclamation of the anniversary of the Kendal train crash as a National Day of Remembrance for victims and survivors is a start towards that much-needed historical marker.

That’s lame at best, many will argue. What’s for certain is that, for our own self respect, the nation should delay no longer in quickly implementing a project, overdue for more than 60 years.