meld opens incorrect path to local file

Question

recently installed meld on my macOS Catalina as mentioned here. My gitconfig file section that uses this looks like this:

[diff]
    tool = meld
[difftool]    
  prompt = false
[difftool "meld"]
  trustExitCode = true
  cmd = open -W -a Meld --args \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

However when I do a git difftool on the root of the repository, it cannot seem to find the path to the local file and assumes it is located at '/'. However when I use the GUI explorer I can point meld to the correct location.

I wonder why meld is unable to find the correct path when opened via git.