I know for a fact that you dont need to install DB2 on clients to get a catalog running. We have a number of machines that remotely connect to a DB2 server, but dont have DB2 installed.
If you run this code snippet, it will tell you about the DB2 catalog on your machine. (when you have one set up)

   use DBI;
   print DBI->data_sources('DB2');
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Im sorry that i dont know how to set up the client machine, they were that way when i started working on them.

I mostly wanted to say that your admin is incorrect.