Greg making a living by selling scraped coconuts

MANY families living in towns and cities do different things to make money and support themselves and Greg Angiwa is focused on selling coconuts.
Angiwa, of mixed Madang and Chimbu parentage, is a familiar face at the Lae Main Market selling scraped coconuts to people who could not find time to scrape coconuts.
He uses an electric scraper which he bought in Port Moresby and started scraping and selling coconuts at the market in 2010.
“I started doing this after I saw that many families, especially mothers, didn’t have time to scrap coconut to use for cooking,” he said.
“Also sometimes people go home to find out that the coconuts they bought at the market were bad and they couldn’t change.
“I applied to Lae City council to scrap coconuts to sell and they approved my application.
“I bought the electric scraper in Port Moresby and brought it to Lae where I started selling scraped coconuts at the main market.”
He makes around K50 to K60 on weekends, and makes around K70-K80 a daily.
When he started, Angiwa said he collected about K20 to K30.
After a while when his service got popular, people came in numbers and he now made good money.
“The money I make daily is used to provide food, school fees and other family needs including support to extended families.
“What I earn is to keep my family and I going in a day.
“The disadvantage of this business is discovering bad coconuts in the bags I buy and that’s when I make a loss.
“Now I can order electric scrapers from China which I sell to others who wished to venture into the scraped coconut business.”
Angiwa is married with one child and lives at Igam in Lae.