STORY: South Africa's Eskom signed a wage deal with trade unions on Tuesday (July 5), potentially paving the way for a resolution to the country's worst power cuts in two years.

The struggling state-owned utility began implementing so-called "Stage 6" outages last week - leaving many without power for at least six hours a day.

It had blamed the power cuts, known locally as "load-shedding", on striking workers hampering efforts to bring malfunctioning power units back online.

The agreement struck with its three recognized unions is for a 7% salary increase.

Officials at the two biggest unions, NUM and NUMSA, had earlier said they'd reached an agreement in principle.

An official for the Solidarity union said the deal with Eskom was being signed.

South Africa has faced intermittent power cuts for more than a decade, hindering economic growth.

Eskom has previously warned that even if an agreement were reached to end the strike, it faces a backlog of maintenance work that could take weeks to clear.

The system, it said, remains vulnerable to additional breakdowns.