Should I just bite the bullet and say I just dont have time ?

...learning perl book is the bible... but thats not a possibility, without me forking out for it myself...

I don't mean to offend, but it sounds like your heart is not into the task of training this person. If your time is worth more than and you are unable to train him, perhaps the less expensive solution would be to buy him the book. Second-hand previous releases can be had from amazon vendors from $3 to $10.

Or he could just ask Google for "Perl Oreilly" and he can read any of the Perl books. I'm not condoning it, but if he's not going to get the books, it's out there.

HTH

PS: if he doesn't have the programming mentality, I don't think the perl books are going to be a very good start. He's going to need some way to be introduced to these concepts as well.