Prepare statement failing when using a command line argument for date value

I am executing my script on the command line with parameter ('?')  values for $firstday and $lastday.  I am passing values sysdate-60 and sysdate for these 2 values of '?'  These values are called from a oracle database function of a DATE datatype.  But the script is failing with on a non-numeric character found on  '?'.   When I run the SELECT query by itself on the database, it works and returns rows.

Is the way I have written the prepare statement in call a database function date parameter,  the issue?

My prepare and bind/execute statements are:

my ($db, $user, $pw, $wkdir, $firstday, $lastday)  = @ARGV;
..
...
...
my $gen_text = $dbh->prepare(qq(SELECT col1, col2, col3  FROM region WHERE status = 'Y' and partition_key = (Select common.get_region('REGION',?, ?) from dual)))
                  								or die("Could not get data from table '$_'".DBI->errstr);

  ...            						
 $gen_text->bind_param(1,$firstday);
 ....
 $gen_text->bind_param(2,$lastday);
 ..
 $gen_text->execute();

Select allOpen in new window