Pena leads by example

By GABRIEL LAHOC
MANY unemployed people in this country can learn from Peter Pena.
Without much education or money, Pena held an ordinary job to support his family and struggled to make ends meet.
These days, he owns three trucks, properties and is a proud owner of a simple, yet thriving soft drink business that he started from scratch.
He is perhaps one of the best known faces in the Lae market as well.
Just outside the market, in the car park he sits alongside an employee selling an assortment of cold  drinks to those passing by.
Pena does his job enthusiastically, using a loud hailer to draw attention and the popular vendor has been doing the business six days a week for 12 years.
From Kup in Chimbu, he left his steady job in 2000 and ventured into making it on his own.
Starting out in a beaten up Landcruiser truck selling water and juice in plastic containers, he now owns properties and trucks.
Pena successfully applied to the city authority for a licence to trade in public places as a registered vendor.
“You don’t have to be educated to know what I am doing now, I am now a businessman with properties and three trucks and I have been recruiting young men over the years as assistants and have trained them to make money from just selling cold drinks.
“My challenge to young men who are unemployed is not to laze around but work hard to make ends meet for yourselves and engage in activities such as what I am doing,” Pena said.
“It will pay off.”