login, then execute the following:

ls -ld .  # this checks the access rights and ownership of your home dir
drwxr-x---    4 martinm  apache       4096 Aug 31 18:57 /home/martinm

ls -ld public_html
drwxr-xr-x    3 auyeunt  auyeunt      4096 Aug 31 00:14 public_html

ls -ld public_html/cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x    2 auyeunt  auyeunt      4096 Aug 31 01:31 public_html/cgi-bin

edit (use vim or pico) public_html/cgi-bin/.htaccess
the content of the file should be as follows:
Options +ExecCGI # tells Apache you may want to run scripts
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl