Not able to see &lt; character in front end
At the end, I found a work around for the problem. In the word link configuration form we can find a "Disallowed html tags" input text box. We can add a  tag there, so now, whenever I want to include the &lt; character in my text, I wrapp the  tag around it. 

I know it is not the cleanest solution but it is enough to keep going until they fix the module.

Hope it can help to someone else.