you have a quoting problem. consider this examples:

C:\Perl Testskripte\580>perl
use strict;

my $name = "kabel";
my $sql_statement = "select * from users where name like '%$name%'";
print "executing [$sql_statement]\n";
^D
executing [select * from users where name like '%kabel%']

C:\Perl Testskripte\580>
[download]

or use the qq operator:

C:\Perl Testskripte\580>perl
use strict;

my $name = "kabel";
my $sql_statement = qq~select * from users where name like '%$name%'~;
print "executing [$sql_statement]\n";
^D
executing [select * from users where name like '%kabel%']

C:\Perl Testskripte\580>
[download]

or just escape the " characters: \"