Try installing Freetype2 and then rebuild Imager.

When I run the truetype capability check (shown above), I get

Has t1 postscript Has Freetype2
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and the following script works fine for me, if I have Generic.ttf in the script directory.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Imager;

my $img = Imager->new(xsize=>400,ysize=>50,channels=>4);

my $blue = Imager::Color->new("#0000FF");
my $font = Imager::Font->new(
                file  => 'Generic.ttf',
                color => $blue,
                size  => 30);
        
$img->string(font  => $font,
             text  => "Model-XYZ",
             x     => 15,
             y     => 40,
             size  => 40,
             color => $blue,
             aa    => 1);
               
$img->write(file=>$0.'.png', type=>'png')
           or die "Cannot write: ",$img->errstr;


my $img_mirror = $img->copy();      
$img_mirror->flip( dir => "h" );

$img_mirror->write(file=>$0.'-mirror.png', type=>'png')
           or die "Cannot write: ",$img_mirror->errstr;
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