You can try using Compress::Zlib (alt.), but that may require installing a private version if it isn't already available.

Alternately, you can call the Unix command line utilities gzip -cd or gzcat from Perl using system, exec, backticks or the very groovy Shell module...

use Shell qw/ gzcat /;

my $file     = "/path/to/gzipped-file"
my $contents = gzcat( $file );
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    --k.