How to debug Cucumber - Protractor in Visual Studio Code (VSCode)?

I am trying to debug Gherkin Cucumber scenarios in Visual Studio Code but I am getting the following error:-

Parse error in 'zFunctionalTests\protractor_ui.conf.js': (1:1): expected: #EOF, #Language, #TagLine, #FeatureLine, #Comment, #Empty, got 'var baseConfig = require('./protractor_base.conf.js');'

I have created the following configuration:

launch.json

{
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "skipFiles": [
                "<node_internals>/**"
            ],
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
            "program": "${workspaceRoot}\\node_modules\\cucumber\\bin\\cucumber-js",
            "protocol": "inspector",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceRoot}\\zFunctionalTests\\protractor_ui.conf.js",
            ],
            "outFiles": [
                "${workspaceRoot}/FunctionalTests/features/*.feature"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

protractor_ui.conf.js

var baseConfig = require('./protractor_base.conf.js');
var localConfig = baseConfig.config;

localConfig.capabilities = {
    'browserName': 'chrome',
    chromeOptions: {
        args: [
            '--start-maximized',
            '--no-sandbox',
        ]
    }
}

exports.config = localConfig;

protractor_base.conf.js

exports.config = {
  allScriptsTimeout: 15000,
  directConnect: true,
  baseUrl: "http://localhost:3000/",
  specs: ["./features/*.feature"],
  framework: "custom",
  frameworkPath: require.resolve("protractor-cucumber-framework"),
  cucumberOpts: {
    require: ["./steps/*.ts"],
    strict: true,
    dryRun: false,
    tags: true,
    profile: false,
    "no-source": true,
    tags: ["~@ignore"],
    compiler: []
  },
  capabilities: {},
  maxSessions: 1,
  multiCapabilities: {},
  allScriptsTimeout: 15000,
  getPageTimeout: 15000,
  onPrepare() {
    require("ts-node").register({
      project: "zFunctionalTests/tsconfig.e2e.json"
    });
    require("dotenv").config();
  }
};

I have tried things described in the following post but it's not working.

How to debug Cucumber in Visual Studio Code (VSCode)?

It may be due to while execution its not picking up tsconfig in which the target es5 is mentioned.

Any help will be appreciated.