It seems obvious to us, and we believe most people, that several of the infrastructure repair and clean-up initiatives being undertaken in Jamaica for Cricket World Cup won't be ready by the time the first warm-up match is played at the multi-purpose stadium in Trelawny on Monday.

Nor will they be completed for the tournament's formal launch with an opening ceremony at Florence Hall on March 11.

Indeed, the effort at sprucing up National Heroes Park, including putting up a new fence and the construction of a pedestrian walkway around sections of the park, has only recently begun. It will require extraordinary effort for the work to be finished in time at this facility which is to be a parking area and shuttle point for people attending matches at Sabina Park in Kingston.

Only within the past week have the rebuilding of sidewalks and the extension of road medians on New Kingston's Knutsford Boulevard begun. Verges are still being prepared for the planting of flowers and shrubs along Tom Redcam Avenue and the route leading to Sabina Park. If anything, the situation along Michael Manley Boulevard and the Rockfort route from the Norman Manley Airport into Kingston is worse.

In downtown Kingston, the St. William Grant Park, named after an important labour leader in Jamaica's history, is little improved from the mess this newspaper highlighted months ago. And the new bus park and pedestrian malls promised by former Prime Minister Patterson more than three years ago are yet to materialise.

It should not have come to this. We were not blind-sided. We have known for half a decade that Jamaica would host matches in this tournament, claimed to be the world's third-largest sporting event, and that we wanted to show our best to the world.

But as is often the case in Jamaica, there is a wide chasm between the grand idea and our capacity to deliver, or to deliver in a timely and structured fashion. And having delivered, we usually are not good at maintenance, as are the examples of the St. William Grant Park, the Mandela Park in Half-Way Tree and National Heroes Park until this newspaper shamed the authorities into some action.

Perhaps we can begin to change this national failing. Indeed, it is a fine opportunity for Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller - a year in office - to begin to place her personal stamp on a new type of leadership and to remove from the administration the perception of its incapacity for sustained effort.

For inasmuch as we want to show the world the best side of Jamaica and Cricket World Cup may have been the catalyst for recent infrastructural works, the ultimate beneficiaries must be Jamaicans. It is our quality of life that must be enhanced from the expenditure of taxpayers' money.

In this regard, we suggestthat Prime Minister Simpson Miller takes direct leadership of the process to ensure that outstanding works under the current initiative are completed and that we put in high gear that much-talked-about programme for the redevelopment of downtown Kingston. Importantly, Mrs. Simpson Miller should lead a crusade for the cleaning up of Jamaica, using as a catalyst the recent initiative by a group of evangelical Christians.

Mr. Patterson was correct in his time to be concerned about the growing "uglification of Jamaica" and the negative impact of grime and dirt on social attitudes. Mrs. Simpson Miller has an opportunity to begin to change this. The last time, when under the ministerial leadership of Dr. Karl Blythe, we spent money t sidewalks and verges to plant flowers and shrub, they soon died of neglect. It shouldn't happen this time.

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