June 30 (Reuters) – South Africa’s state power utility Eskom said it will implement ongoing power cuts later on Thursday and Friday, blaming an unlawful strike linked to a wage dispute with trade unions that began last week.

“The high levels of staff absenteeism and intimidation of working employees in some of the power stations is still rife,” Eskom said in a statement.

It warned that the “Stage 6” power cuts would run from 1400 until midnight local time on Thursday and from 0500 until midnight on Friday.

Eskom implemented so-called “Stage 6” outages, for the first time since December 2019 on Tuesday and Wednesday. Read full story

(Writing by Nellie Peyton in Dakar and Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru;Editing by James Macharia Chege)