I can't think of a way to get perldoc to ignore your embedded POD, but here are a couple of possible workarounds.

1. Store your POD in a separate file, then read that file into your script.

2. Create pseudo-POD in a variable, then process the variable before using it:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $p = '
==pod

==head1 NAME

programName
...

==cut
';

$p =~ s/^==/=/g;

print "$p\n";
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