A few things, first and foremost, don't mess with the vendor (RedHat) Perl. It's used by the OS. Messing (installing or upgrading existing module versions) with this can result in a broken system, which nobody wants.

Install you're own elsewhere on the system, INSTALL gives notes on doing so, it's really not that big a deal. perlbrew is also another option worth investigating. While you're at it, install a newer version of perl. 5.8.8. is from 2006.

Update: See also local::lib